In a striking parenthetical aside, Bayard describes how Mrs. Compson's husband "would gather up eight or ten little niggers" from among the slaves on his plantation and shoot sweet potatoes off their heads with a rifle (62). It is not clear if Bayard saw this with his own eyes, but he does add that "they would stand mighty still" (62).
"The men who were Father's troop," as Bayard calls them, served with John Sartoris in the irregular Confederate cavalry unit that he organized after withdrawing from the Army of Northern Virginia (59). Though Bayard says that "they had surrendered" (58) and never fire another shot, the story depicts them still fighting for him, against the "Yankees" who try to elect a former slave as town marshal and against the "ladies" who force Sartoris and Drusilla to marry.
Named after his father Dennison, Denny Hawk is Bayard's cousin, and about his own age. He accompanies his mother on her trip to Yoknapatawpha, and on the day of the election, without his mother's permission, goes into town with Ringo.
According to Bayard, the Negro porter at the Holston House who takes one look at the white men who have assembled in the Square on election day, says "Gret Gawd," and retreats into the hotel is "too old even to be free" (71). Bayard's meaning seems to be that while this man is a newly emancipated slave, he has no interest in joining the group of blacks who do want to vote.
Though she appears in "Skirmish at Sartoris" only in the phrase "Mrs. Holston's porter" (71), the name Holston is one of the oldest in Yoknapatawpha, and hotel where the porter works must be the Holston House, one of the oldest buildings in Jefferson.
George Wyatt is a former member of Colonel John Sartoris' "troop" (58) and a key ally in his campaign to keep freed blacks from either voting or being elected. The Wyatts whom Faulkner had written about in his earlier fictions, Flags in the Dust and "A Rose for Emily," belong to the town's upper class, but there is no overt indication that George is a member of that family or (other than the fact that he is literate) about his own rank, in society or in the army.
According to Bayard, "all the ladies in Jefferson" travel out to the Sartoris plantation on several occasions (58): to confront Drusilla for her unlady-like behavior and to attend the wedding that will ceremonialize her return to their fold. The first time they appear, there are "fourteen of them," though that total includes Martha Habersham (63). They all seem both curious and outraged by what they see. The narrative juxtaposes the mission of these ladies to the work John Sartoris and their husbands are doing "back in Jefferson" to preserve their white male power (63).
The Habersham family figures in Faulkner's fiction as one of the founders of Yoknapatawpha. Martha Habersham figures in this story as the most determined among the Jefferson ladies who pressure Drusilla to behave like a woman. Convinced that Drusilla and John Sartoris' relationship is sexual, Mrs. Habersham takes the lead in planning the wedding between them.
Louisa Hawk, Bayard's Aunt Louisa, would call herself (to quote from her letter to Rosa Millard) "the widow of a lost cause," which, she might add, is "the highest destiny of a Southern woman" (61). Her husband was killed while serving in the Confederate army during the Civil War.
The Compson family is one of the most important in the Yoknapatawpha fictions. They are already in the county by the early 19th century, and still a presence there, though a very diminished one, in the 1940s. But the 'Mr. Compson' in this story, the the man referred to as the husband of Mrs. Compson, is an enigmatic figure. In the other Unvanquished stories with a Mrs. Compson and her unnamed husband in them - "Retreat," "Raid," "Unvanquished" and "Vendee" - the pair are the paternal grandparents of the Compson children in The Sound and the Fury.
