Florida Governor. John Milton is remembered as the governor of Florida, who served under both the United States flag and the Confederate flag. He had a strong patriotic heritage with his grandfather, John Milton, serving in the Revolutionary War and being nominated as a candidate from the State of Georgia to be the first President of the United States. He was a distant descendant of the famed English poet John Milton. He was the son of a veteran of the War of 1812, General Homer Virgil Milton, and Elizabeth Jane Robinson Milton. He attended an academy in Louisville, Georgia, studied law, and established law practices in Columbus, Georgia; Mobile, Alabama; and in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1830, he first married Susan Amanda Cobb of Georgia, and before she died in 1842, four children were borne to this union. Then he married a much younger Caroline Howze, who he met in Alabama and 10 more children were born, yet only seven of their children lived to reach adulthood. During the Creek Indian War in Alabama, Milton was commissioned a captain serving from 1835 to 1837. Following a terrible steamboat accident on the Mississippi River, he suffered severe burns then decided to bring his family to his parent's home. After returning to Florida, he became active in politics as a Democratic presidential elector in 1848 and a member of the House of Representatives from Jackson County in 1850. On October 1, 1860, he was elected to be the fifth Governor of the State of Florida, and he was sworn into office a year later on October 7, 1861. Since Florida's secession from the Union was after the election, Milton was the legal governor of Florida under the laws of both the United States and the Confederacy. He actually was the one, as Governor-elected, to read the Ordinance of Secession to the crowd gathered at the Capitol in Tallahassee, thus making Florida the third state to leave the United States. A zealous advocate of secession, he had been outspoken on the position of states' rights for nearly 30 years. States' Rights meaning a state had the right to decide certain issues including the right to own slaves to work the huge plantations of the South. The 6,330 acres Sylvannia Plantation, which was built by slaves who were owned by the Robinson side of his family, was now Milton's home along with another smaller plantation nearby. As Florida's Governor during the war, he developed a very active state militia, promoted Florida's ability to serve as an important source of food and salt for the Confederate forces, issuing paper money that was sponsored by the state's public lands, and attempted to seize any Union strong-holds in the state. On the eve of the end of the war, under the disappointment of Jefferson Davis' surrender, and the stress having Florida being penniless from a lost cause and soon being occupied by Union Forces, Milton addressed his legislature to say he "preferred death to reunion with those Yankees". At this point, Milton left Tallahassee and returned to his family at Sylvannia Plantation. Then on April 1, 1865, Milton, at the age of 57 years, pointed a pistol to his head for a fatal self-inflected gunshot wound. He left his wife Caroline with several young children to face the hardships of living on a large plantation in a war-torn state without slaves. Milton's last child was born in 1861 and name Jefferson Davis Milton. Upon Milton's death, Abraham Allison became Florida's governor.