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.