The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The leader of the sixty Yankees whom Sartoris captures. The officer ruefully says, "Colonel, by God I believe you have fooled us" (31).

This icon represents two different groups of Union soldiers: the "column of Yankee infantry" that passes by Bayard and his father's troop hiding in the woods (28) and the sixty Yankees that Colonel Sartoris, with some involuntary help from Bayard and Ringo, captures when he inadvertently rides into them eating by a creek (30).

In a confusing scene, Bayard sees "six men running in the next field" and then "ten or twelve" or perhaps more who may be chasing the first six or may be part of the same group (25). At least some of them are stealing the "stock," i.e. the livestock, of the farmers in the area, and "five men" from the second group attack Granny and her party (25).

Granny explains why they are traveling this way: "My sister lives in Memphis, we are going there" (24). Since "Millard" is Granny's married name, we have no way of knowing the name of her sister.

Confederate Cavalry officer who warns Granny that she should turn back because "the roads ahead are full of Yankee patrols" (24). He apologizes for saying "hell" in her presence, and is chivalrous enough to offer her "an escort" when she insists on going on (24).

The Confederate officer who talks with Buck McCaslin about Colonel Sartoris. He is the commander of the unit that is camped outside of town.

This is the Union soldier who was captured by the Confederate unit camped outside Jefferson; according to its captain, this Yankee was sure that Sartoris had more than a thousand men in his troop.

Famous Confederate General who earned his nickname during the first Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas).

The "Uncle Buck" who appears in this story is described more like a poor white than a member of the upper class McCaslin family that emerges in later fictions. He stops Bayard and Ringo as they head through town, and regales a confederate officer with his sarcastic but fond account of the exploits of John Sartoris. Shouting his words, he "sounds just like a hen," and when he runs out of breath "the tobacco" he's chewing runs out of his mouth and onto his beard (22).

The Mrs. Compson mentioned in "Retreat" is presumably the wife of General Compson (and so one of the grandmothers of Quentin, Caddy, Jason and Benjy in The Sound and the Fury). She never appears in the story, but is mentioned as the lady whom Granny asks to look after her flowers and from whom Granny is given a set of "rose cuttings" (23).