Buck and Buddy's Cabin (Location Key)

This cabin is the site of an unusual social experiment, mentioned in The Unvanquished and Go Down, Moses. After Old Carothers McCaslin dies, his sons Buck and Buddy build this "oneroom log cabin" for themselves on the plantation, and move "all the slaves" into "the big house" - the "tremendously-conceived" plantation mansion that their father had built for his family (Go Down, Moses, 248). Except when they needed help lifting the logs into place, Buck and Buddy "refuse to allow any slave" to work on their cabin, even as they "add other rooms" to it over the years (248). This re-arrangement - slaves in the big house, their owners in a cabin - is part of the brothers' progressive but unrealized plans for eventually allowing all their slaves to buy their own freedom. When Buck marries Sophonsiba Beauchamp, she insists on moving into the mansion; presumably the slaves go back into the cabins in the quarters, while Buddy continues to live in this cabin. The McCaslin plantation continues to be owned and operated by the Edmondses, descendants of Old Carothers' daughter, into the middle of the 20th century, but in the descriptions of the place after the Civil War there is no trace of Buck and Buddy's 'reconstruction' - the Edmondses live in (and according to The Reivers substantially increase) the big house; the Negro tenant farmers on the plantation live in cabins in what Moses calls "the quarters" (161).