The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Vicksburg, a city on steep bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, was a strategically important Confederate stronghold in the Civil War. It was the target of several major campaigns by Union troops, including a naval campaign led by Admiral David Farragut that began in May 1862 and continued into June and July of that year. But the city's location high above the river made naval bombardment impractical. The city finally fell to Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1863, after a 47-day siege.

Corinth is a town in extreme northeastern Mississippi, roughly 60-70 miles from the approximate location of Yoknapatawpha County, and 20 miles south of the Shiloh battlefield. After their loss at Shiloh, Confederate soldiers retreated to Corinth, but the city fell to Union forces at the end of May 1862 - which is what Loosh is referring to when he tells Bayard, after destroying the make-believe Vicksburg, "I tell you nother you aint know. . . . Corinth" (5). Bayard, who has "been there," knows how close Corinth is to Yoknapatawpha.

Throughout the novel, there is little specific description of the Sartoris mansion. From the minor descriptions of the rooms - the porch, the dining room (12), kitchen (14), a room "which [Father] and the negroes called the Office" (15) but Granny calls the library "because there was one bookcase in it" (16), back gallery (17), Granny's and Bayard's room upstairs - the house seems to be a typical antebellum two-story house in the middle of the Sartoris plantation.

Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck go into the woods to sleep before their eating contest. They go far enough from the Plantation to be away from places that could tempt them to eat, and to make the run back to the Plantation in the morning long enough to be "an appetiser" (372).