Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Fri, 2016-05-13 10:10
Stonewall Jackson led a campaign through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia during the American Civil War. Turner Ashby, a Confederate cavalry commander, served with him during the campaign - it's likely but not definite that the novel's mention of the fighting Ashby led took place as part of it.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Fri, 2016-05-13 10:04
The first McCaslin in Yoknapatawpha - Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin - originally came "from Carolina" too (295), but text doesn't say where. Charleston, where Ike McCaslin's business partner worked from 1862-1863, is in South Carolina. This man help build blockade-runners - ships designed to elude the Union naval blockade of the port at Charleston - in order to bring needed materials from abroad into the Confederacy.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Fri, 2016-05-13 09:56
There are four concrete markers set down in the wilderness to mark the small plot of land on a knoll that Major de Spain reserved when he sold the rest of his hunting grounds to the lumber company. It is just large enough to contain the graves of Sam Fathers and Lion, as well as "Old Ben's dried mutilated paw" (312).
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Fri, 2016-05-13 09:52
This location changes slightly and profoundly between "Lion" and Go Down, Moses. In both texts the "the spring flood water" (199) or "the flood-waters of two springs" (311) have washed away all traces of the graves by the time they are visited by Quentin Compson and Ike McCaslin, respectively. In "Lion" the spot is marked by "four pale trunks" of holly trees, and is where the dog Lion was buried under a "wooden cross with Old Ben's dried mutilated paw nailed to it" ("Lion," 199).
