Underwood's great-great-great-grandfather, Corporal Augustus Elijah Underwood, was a Confederate soldier who served in the 12th South Carolina Infantry Regiment of Samuel McGowan's Brigade at the Battle of Spotsylvania. He served at the Bloody Angle on May 12, 1864, during the Civil War and was killed by a bludgeon to the back of the head from his own regiment during the middle of the night. Underwood is fascinated by his ancestry, even though he dismisses the Confederacy as "weak" and their cause of preserving slavery "asinine". When Underwood falls into a coma following an assassination attempt, Augustus appears in several of his hallucinations. His great-great grandfather was two when Augustus was killed.