Josiah A. Temple became a substitute for Captain William Watson of Company D after he quit service and was then drafted. Watson paid Temple to take his place. Temple joined the Seventeenth Maine Infantry and set out on a life filled with contradictions. He was a lawyer who defrauded his clients. He was a politician who lied. He was a moral reformer accused of abusing women. Temple was a troubled personality, losing nearly his entire family in childhood, and a man who failed miserably to live up to the ideals he espoused.

Josiah Temple became the paid substitute for former Company D Captain William Watson. Taking money to fight for another man became symbolic of the life Temple would lead. He became a lawyer, politician, and temperance advocate, but beneath the surface, he was a con man and a crook. He was forced to move repeatedly as his legal and ethical lapses hounded him, until he ended up in Minnesota as a candidate for the state Supreme Court. Listen to the trailer for "The Intolerant Life of Josiah Temple" and hear the full episode on January 28, 2026.

More than 700,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War. This episode follows how the death of a single soldier, Private Gustavus Pratt, altered the course of one family: the Pratts of Richmond, Maine.

It is the story of a grief-stricken father marching straight into disaster, a widow who slips into a life of lies and betrayal, and a younger brother’s brutal path toward redemption.