The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Colonel Sartoris' first military command was the regiment of men from Yoknapatawpha that he raised at the beginning of the Civil War. During the war's first year he led it as part of Stonewall Jackson's corps in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, but after the second battle of Manassas these soldiers voted him out of the command.

In a passage added to the "Retreat" chapter of The Unvanquished, Bayard describes these poor whites as "the people whom the niggers called 'white trash'" - though he refers to them several times as "white trash" too (48-49). Their low status is defined in part by the fact that they "owned no slaves" (49). They farm "little patches of poor hill land" near the McCaslin place and in some cases "live worse than the slaves on the big plantation" (49). According to Bayard, they "look on Uncle Buck and Buddy like Deity Himself" (49).

The McCaslin place is a slave plantation, and Buck and Buddy inherit a large number of enslaved people from their father. But as Bayard explains in the narrative, the twins' treatment of their slaves is extremely atypical. They move out of the "big colonial house which their father had built" (46), and use it instead to house the slaves; as long as they do so surreptitiously, these slaves are allowed to leave every night.

The father of Buck and Buddy McCaslin was a planter whose mansion, according to Bayard, is said to be "one of the finest houses in the country" (47). He is not named in this novel, but becomes the dead father whose legacy haunts his descendants on both sides of the color line in Go Down, Moses.

Throughout the novel's Civil War present, Buck McCaslin's twin brother Buddy is fighting in Tennant's Brigade in Virginia after beating his brother in a card game for the privilege of serving in the Confederate regiment that was raised in Yoknapatawpha. But a passage that Faulkner wrote for the novel and interpolated into the "Retreat" chapter describes in some detail the "ideas about social relationships" between classes and races that made both brothers "ahead of their time" (48).

The Confederate officer who talks with Buck McCaslin about Colonel Sartoris. He is the commander of the unit from "Arkansaw" (46) that is camped outside of town.

In this novel Uncle Buck McCaslin's character remains the same as it had been in the four Unvanquished short stories he appears or is mentioned in, but in a new passage Faulkner gives him a twin brother and a family background that locates him in Yoknapatawpha's plantation aristocracy; this is the way the McCaslin family will be imagined in subsequent works, especially Go Down, Moses. The passage also gives Buck a twin brother, Buddy.

She is never given any name but Mrs. Compson. She is a close friend of Granny Millard, and loans her various items - a hat, a parasol - with which to maintain her gentility during the privations of the Civil War; later she extends her kindness to Bayard and Ringo after Rosa's death. Bayard says she is "was older than Granny" (193). The Compson family is one of the most important in the Yoknapatawpha fictions. But there is some confusion about the "Mrs. Compson" who appears in five of this novel's chapters. Chronologically, she should be "Mrs.

This icon represents the Confederate troops who are "bivouacked" just outside of Jefferson. Their uniforms are the color of "dead leaves" (46). Since one of them hollers out "Hooraw for Arkansas!" when Bayard and Ringo drive by their camp, it seems likely that this company was formed in that state.

Colonel Dick is a Union cavalryman with a "bright beard" and "hard bright eyes" (109). When his troop of Ohio cavalry comes to the Sartoris plantation looking for Colonel John, he impresses Rosa Millard with his gentlemanly behavior and kindness. Knowing she can trust him, she seeks his help in retrieving the silver and mules that a different Union unit has confiscated. Once again he is helpful to her cause.