In the little town of Midnight, Arkansas, Ike McCaslin arranges with this man, a "translated Mississippian" and a former Confederate who, like his father, served under Nathan Bedford Forrest (267), to make sure that Fonsiba gets her legacy in installments over a long period of time.
The father of the unnamed Negro who marries Fonsiba is only mentioned in passing, but occupies a significant place in the Yoknapatawpha fiction as an African American who served in the Union army. There were in historical fact almost 180,000 'Colored troops' during the Civil War, serving in both non-combat and combat roles, but until recently these men were largely invisible in American representations of that war. This man is the only black "Yankee" soldier in Faulkner's work (261).
