Peyton Farquhar, we learn at the beginning of Section II, was a "well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family." He was a slave owner and a secessionist, "ardently devoted to the Southern cause." In other words, he was very much in favor of the Confederacy seceding from the Union (the southern states forming their own country, distinct from the northern ones). This story, then, we now know is set during the era of the American Civil War, deep into the war when the army from the north was making great headway in the southern states.
Farquhar, unable to join the war as a soldier, feels compelled to aid the Confederate effort as much as he possibly can. "No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier" who believed that "all is fair in love and war." When he learns that the Yanks have repaired the railroads, having reached Owl Creek Bridge, he ascertains that disrupting the railroad would be seriously detrimental to the Union war effort. A man dressed as a Confederate soldier tells him that there's a great deal of driftwood pressed right up against the bridge from a recent storm, and, if set alight, it "would burn like tow." Farquhar, in his desire to aid the Southern war effort as much as possible, makes the attempt to burn the bridge down. (However, that soldier was actually a Federal scout, so the Union army was prepared for such an attack, caught Farquhar, and hanged him.)
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