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.

Private Gustavus Pratt died of typhoid fever on June 25, 1862. He was 32 years old. His death did not end with him.

It tore a hole through his family, through the mind of his wife, the faith of his father, and the life of his brother. “The Awful Hole Left by Gustavus Pratt” is the story of how the loss of one ordinary soldier during the American Civil War set off a chain reaction of grief, madness, and ruin within a single family. The full episode drops January 14, 2026.

They were teenagers when they enlisted, young soldiers whose ambition and courage propelled them into the leadership ranks of Company D as the American Civil War consumed older men around them. Jeremiah Wakefield and David Ring rose together, shared similar family histories, and committed to three more years of service. But in May 1864, during the savage fighting at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, their paths diverged: one was badly wounded, and the other was killed in battle.

More than one in five Civil War soldiers were teenagers. In Company D, two of them, 18-year-old David Ring and 19-year-old Jeremiah Wakefield, rose quickly through the ranks on ambition and grit. But the war would claim one before he ever saw twenty-one. The full episode premieres on December 17.

On July 4, 1862, Private Leonard Peaslee vanished from the U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland. No discharge. No death record. No trace. His disappearance shattered his family: his wife, Cornelia, and their infant daughter slid into poverty, denied a widow’s pension because no one could prove Leonard was gone. More than 163 years later, this episode of Company D follows the trail he left behind and uncovers the mystery of what became of Leonard Peaslee.

On May 5, 1862, Private Leonard Peaslee checked into U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis, sick but expected to recover. Two months later, after writing his wife on July 4, he vanished. No death record. No discharge. No trace. Ep06 — “Leonard Peaslee Is Gone” follows the 163-year mystery of a Union private who simply disappeared. And maybe, just maybe, we find him. The full episode premieres on December 3.