army into town.
Bowling Green was a tranquil southern Kentucky city of about 2,500 souls, whose population likely shared a greater cultural and political affinity with the Tennesseans right across the border than, say, the citizens of Louisville in the north, who were just downriver from Yankee Cincinnati, Ohio. Josie Underwood’s family was among the most prominent in town. Her father was a successful planter and lawyer and had been a state representative as well as a U.S. congressman until 1859, and he was the principal leader of the community until the question of secession broke out. Like most Unionists in that part of the state, he reviled Lincoln and his policies and had supported the conciliatory ticket of John Bell, yet he abhorred the notion of secession. The family lived at Mount Air, a thousand-acre cotton plantation on the outskirts of town, in a palatial two-story brick manor house surrounded by orchards and with a ballroom upstairs. 4 The 1860 census valued their land and personal property (including the 28 slaves who worked the place) at $105,000—some $2.8 million in today’s money.
In mid-December of that year, a month after Lincoln’s election and a mere week before South Carolina would vote to secede from the Union, Josie and her friend Jane Grider took the train to Memphis to spend the winter with Josie’s sister Jupe, and her husband, William Western, a prosperous lawyer and ardent secessionist, who owned a mansion in the Memphis Garden District. It was Josie’s first time away from home since she became, in her own words, “a full fledged ‘Young lady.’ ” But had it not been for Western’s “general good-naturedness,” her arrival might have invited a level of unwanted tension since, like her father, she remained a Unionist.
This general good nature did not necessarily extend to Memphis’s social circles, however, as Josie would soon discover. She was an attractive young woman and highly sought after by the town’s leading bachelors, especially a 28-year-old lawyer named Thomas Grafton. Josie soon felt herself as much drawn to the wealthy, witty, and handsome Grafton as she was repelled by his political views. He took her to a play, and instead of watching it he watched her; he brought her flowers.
As their relation blossomed it is evident from Josie’s diary how the most basic emotions became cramped, twisted, and too often torn apart by the prospect of secession. As weeks passed during the early winter of 1861, and more Southern states seceded, discussions often turned to arguments—or worse—as became the case with Tom Grafton.
Will Webb, another young lawyer in Memphis, the brother-in-law of William Western’s legal partner, was outspoken in his strong Unionist sentiments and less than circumspect in the way he expressed them. As Josie remarked to her diary, “The subject of secession like Banquo’s ghost
will not die down
but will comeup—no matter what the place or time—especially if Will Webb and Tom Grafton meet.”
The occasion this time and place was the Grand New Year’s Eve Ball at Memphis’s famed Gayosa Hotel, 5 at which all of Memphis society turned out. In Josie’s estimation, it was “the most splendid affair I ever attended—my first big
full grown
ball!” With Tom Grafton as her escort, they encountered Will Webb, “whose bad taste started the subject,” she wrote, adding, “I as bad as any of them.” What infuriated her most was that whenever the secession issue came up Tom Grafton—in his most lawyerly fashion—would invariably link her to Lincoln and the abolitionists, who were despised in those parts, referring jokingly to “
your friend
Lincoln.”
Still, of all the young men, “Tom Grafton interests me most,” she admitted. “I don’t know just why.”
It was a scene playing out all over the state. Josie’s cousin, for example, a West Point graduate, was on the verge of becoming engaged to a girl who insisted that he resign his
Bowling Green was a tranquil southern Kentucky city of about 2,500 souls, whose population likely shared a greater cultural and political affinity with the Tennesseans right across the border than, say, the citizens of Louisville in the north, who were just downriver from Yankee Cincinnati, Ohio. Josie Underwood’s family was among the most prominent in town. Her father was a successful planter and lawyer and had been a state representative as well as a U.S. congressman until 1859, and he was the principal leader of the community until the question of secession broke out. Like most Unionists in that part of the state, he reviled Lincoln and his policies and had supported the conciliatory ticket of John Bell, yet he abhorred the notion of secession. The family lived at Mount Air, a thousand-acre cotton plantation on the outskirts of town, in a palatial two-story brick manor house surrounded by orchards and with a ballroom upstairs. 4 The 1860 census valued their land and personal property (including the 28 slaves who worked the place) at $105,000—some $2.8 million in today’s money.
In mid-December of that year, a month after Lincoln’s election and a mere week before South Carolina would vote to secede from the Union, Josie and her friend Jane Grider took the train to Memphis to spend the winter with Josie’s sister Jupe, and her husband, William Western, a prosperous lawyer and ardent secessionist, who owned a mansion in the Memphis Garden District. It was Josie’s first time away from home since she became, in her own words, “a full fledged ‘Young lady.’ ” But had it not been for Western’s “general good-naturedness,” her arrival might have invited a level of unwanted tension since, like her father, she remained a Unionist.
This general good nature did not necessarily extend to Memphis’s social circles, however, as Josie would soon discover. She was an attractive young woman and highly sought after by the town’s leading bachelors, especially a 28-year-old lawyer named Thomas Grafton. Josie soon felt herself as much drawn to the wealthy, witty, and handsome Grafton as she was repelled by his political views. He took her to a play, and instead of watching it he watched her; he brought her flowers.
As their relation blossomed it is evident from Josie’s diary how the most basic emotions became cramped, twisted, and too often torn apart by the prospect of secession. As weeks passed during the early winter of 1861, and more Southern states seceded, discussions often turned to arguments—or worse—as became the case with Tom Grafton.
Will Webb, another young lawyer in Memphis, the brother-in-law of William Western’s legal partner, was outspoken in his strong Unionist sentiments and less than circumspect in the way he expressed them. As Josie remarked to her diary, “The subject of secession like Banquo’s ghost
will not die down
but will comeup—no matter what the place or time—especially if Will Webb and Tom Grafton meet.”
The occasion this time and place was the Grand New Year’s Eve Ball at Memphis’s famed Gayosa Hotel, 5 at which all of Memphis society turned out. In Josie’s estimation, it was “the most splendid affair I ever attended—my first big
full grown
ball!” With Tom Grafton as her escort, they encountered Will Webb, “whose bad taste started the subject,” she wrote, adding, “I as bad as any of them.” What infuriated her most was that whenever the secession issue came up Tom Grafton—in his most lawyerly fashion—would invariably link her to Lincoln and the abolitionists, who were despised in those parts, referring jokingly to “
your friend
Lincoln.”
Still, of all the young men, “Tom Grafton interests me most,” she admitted. “I don’t know just why.”
It was a scene playing out all over the state. Josie’s cousin, for example, a West Point graduate, was on the verge of becoming engaged to a girl who insisted that he resign his
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