The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Although he is a Methodist, in the absence of the regular minister "Brother" Fortinbride officiates in the services that Rosa Millard organizes in the Episcopal Church. A private in Sartoris' regiment, he was seriously wounded in battle at the start of the war. Invalided back to Yoknapatawpha, he also helps Rosa distribute money and mules to the county's poor.

These unnamed soldiers attempt to intercept Rosa Millard after she takes the mules from Colonel Newberry's Union camp.

Granny passes this unnamed sentry en route to her encounter with Colonel Newberry.

These two men help Ab Snopes as part of Granny Millard's campaign against the Union troops in Mississippi - which is to say, they help Ab take the mules Granny steals to Memphis, where they can be sold back to the Union Army.

Colonel G. W. Newberry is the commander of the Union regiment identified as the "-th Illinois Infantry" (124). Rosa Millard tricks him into handing over Yankee mules to her.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States and the Union's leader during the Civil War, would already have been dead when John Sartoris mentions him as having promised "to send us troops" to help restore order to the South after it surrendered (198). Before his assassination, Lincoln did urge compassion and a form of political forgiveness for the defeated Confederacy, but there is no clear basis for Sartoris' claim.

Although the story mentions "General Smith" twice (120,121), it does not give his first name. There were two Union Generals with that last name who fought Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest in Mississippi at various times after the fall of Vicksburg. General William Sooy Smith was defeated by Forrest on February 22, 1864 in the Battle of Okolona, and did in fact fight Forrest "up and down the road to Memphis" (128). However, most scholars assume the General Smith in Faulkner's story is Andrew Jackson Smith, who fought Forrest at the Battle of Tupelo in July, 1864.

Ab Snopes is the founding father of the Snopes family, the prolific clan that appears in many of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha fictions. In The Unvanquished he is left on the Sartoris plantation during the war, Bayard writes, because "Father told Ab to kind of look out for Granny while he was away" - but then Bayard adds: "he told me and Ringo to look out for Ab too" (120). Ab is Granny's ally in the scheme to defraud the Yankee army, but becomes Bayard and Ringo's enemy after indirectly causing her death at Grumby's hands.

A woman who informs Mrs. Millard that she and her party have entered Mississippi.

One of the former slaves allocated to Rosa Millard by the Union Lieutenant. He is identified only as a stranger to her, Bayard and Ringo. He steps forward to drive the wagon when the Lieutenant asks for someone who can handle "two span" of mules (111).