U.S. Army commission and join the Confederacy. Lifelong friends suddenly found themselves not just in opposite political camps but divided by hatreds that transcended politics.
Josie continued her conflicted relationship with Tom Grafton, often at the same time trying to talk herself out of it. “For truly I do not know whether I love him or not,” she wrote in her diary. “I know I don’t feel as I want to feel towards the man I would marrybut maybe there is no such exalted love as I imagine,” she said. “Yet I would not be satisfied with less, and his secessionism is a great barrier between us.”
One day word came that Grafton and Will Webb had become embroiled in a “personal altercation” inside the law offices during which Webb had called Grafton a “traitor” and a “liar,” and Grafton “jerked up a chair and would have killed Mr. Webb” but another of Josie’s cousins, Jack Henry, “sprang forward and caught the chair” and got the matter settled down. Grafton then “marched out glaring at Webb saying, ‘this is not the end. Sir—insignificant as you are, pistols make us even.’ ”
Next day Grafton sent his challenge to Webb, and for the rest of that day and the next the seconds were busy arranging for the duel across the river in Arkansas where such things were routinely conducted. The night before the affair was to take place, Grafton appeared at the Westerns’ residence, where Josie was, by chance, alone. As was the custom, a cloak of silence had descended over the matter of the duel, so neither the authorities nor the ladies, Josie included, were aware of it. There in the parlor Grafton professed his love.
He was an orphan, he said. Both mother and father died when he “was too young to remember,” and there were no siblings, and thus “there was no one to love him, even if he should die.”
He said to her, “Miss Underwood, I generally take life as it comes to me, and waste no time on self pity, but tonight I felt so unutterably lonely … [and] in my loneliness my heart turned to you.” He was leaving town next day, he said, “and then he told me—in words I can’t write—that he loved me—also that it was wrong for him to tell me—as he had already offered himself to hisstate as a soldier, … and he could not ask any bright young life to be tied to his, but he found he could not leave me without trying for the happiness of winning a little word of love from me.”
She tried to soothe him but in the end could not bring herself to honor his request. “I don’t know just what to think of myself—whether I am capable of love or not,” she told her diary. “I tried to explain to him that I liked him more than any man I knew, … I don’t feel as he feels toward me—for he seems to be everything a girl might love except, alas! his desire to break up our country.”
He kissed her hand and said goodbye, then asked her “in a solemn sort of way ‘Pray for me tonight—for I have no mother to do it.’ ” And then he was gone.
Next day when Josie went in to breakfast she found that William Western had left early. She “couldn’t help but feel uneasy, just why I couldn’t say.” Her cousin Warner came in and informed everyone that Grafton had challenged Webb to a duel at sunup that morning, and suddenly she realized what all the talk of dying and going away had been about the night before. Her friend Miss Jane asked, “Are they dead?” When Western replied, “No, neither,” Josie’s “heart gave a great throb of joy!” He further explained that “they had gone across the river but with so many interested parties it leaked out and the [law] officers got wind of it and got there just in time to stop the awful murder and suicide, for that is just what a duel is.”
Josie saw Grafton a few times after that. Her stay in Memphis was cut short by the dramatic events surrounding secession and the forming of the Confederacy. “There is so much excitement
Josie continued her conflicted relationship with Tom Grafton, often at the same time trying to talk herself out of it. “For truly I do not know whether I love him or not,” she wrote in her diary. “I know I don’t feel as I want to feel towards the man I would marrybut maybe there is no such exalted love as I imagine,” she said. “Yet I would not be satisfied with less, and his secessionism is a great barrier between us.”
One day word came that Grafton and Will Webb had become embroiled in a “personal altercation” inside the law offices during which Webb had called Grafton a “traitor” and a “liar,” and Grafton “jerked up a chair and would have killed Mr. Webb” but another of Josie’s cousins, Jack Henry, “sprang forward and caught the chair” and got the matter settled down. Grafton then “marched out glaring at Webb saying, ‘this is not the end. Sir—insignificant as you are, pistols make us even.’ ”
Next day Grafton sent his challenge to Webb, and for the rest of that day and the next the seconds were busy arranging for the duel across the river in Arkansas where such things were routinely conducted. The night before the affair was to take place, Grafton appeared at the Westerns’ residence, where Josie was, by chance, alone. As was the custom, a cloak of silence had descended over the matter of the duel, so neither the authorities nor the ladies, Josie included, were aware of it. There in the parlor Grafton professed his love.
He was an orphan, he said. Both mother and father died when he “was too young to remember,” and there were no siblings, and thus “there was no one to love him, even if he should die.”
He said to her, “Miss Underwood, I generally take life as it comes to me, and waste no time on self pity, but tonight I felt so unutterably lonely … [and] in my loneliness my heart turned to you.” He was leaving town next day, he said, “and then he told me—in words I can’t write—that he loved me—also that it was wrong for him to tell me—as he had already offered himself to hisstate as a soldier, … and he could not ask any bright young life to be tied to his, but he found he could not leave me without trying for the happiness of winning a little word of love from me.”
She tried to soothe him but in the end could not bring herself to honor his request. “I don’t know just what to think of myself—whether I am capable of love or not,” she told her diary. “I tried to explain to him that I liked him more than any man I knew, … I don’t feel as he feels toward me—for he seems to be everything a girl might love except, alas! his desire to break up our country.”
He kissed her hand and said goodbye, then asked her “in a solemn sort of way ‘Pray for me tonight—for I have no mother to do it.’ ” And then he was gone.
Next day when Josie went in to breakfast she found that William Western had left early. She “couldn’t help but feel uneasy, just why I couldn’t say.” Her cousin Warner came in and informed everyone that Grafton had challenged Webb to a duel at sunup that morning, and suddenly she realized what all the talk of dying and going away had been about the night before. Her friend Miss Jane asked, “Are they dead?” When Western replied, “No, neither,” Josie’s “heart gave a great throb of joy!” He further explained that “they had gone across the river but with so many interested parties it leaked out and the [law] officers got wind of it and got there just in time to stop the awful murder and suicide, for that is just what a duel is.”
Josie saw Grafton a few times after that. Her stay in Memphis was cut short by the dramatic events surrounding secession and the forming of the Confederacy. “There is so much excitement
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