Corley came out against talk of secession when it began being heard in South Carolina in the early 1850s,[1] and an effort was made to expel him from the state.

Corley was a leader in the state's Lutheran church[2] and served as editor of the South Carolina Temperance Standard in 1855 and 1856.

[3] Corley entered the Confederate States Army in 1863 and was captured by Union troops at Petersburg, Virginia, on April 2, 1865.

He served as special agent of the United States Treasury in 1869, commissioner of agricultural statistics of South Carolina in 1870 and treasurer of Lexington County in 1874.

He died in Lexington, South Carolina, on November 20, 1902, and was interred in St. Stephen's Lutheran Cemetery (his Find a Grave memorial).