Go Down, Moses, 272 (Event)

Cass pushes his argument further by citing the oft-told story of how the Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart recklessly led his cavalry troops around the Union Army instead of directly serving Lee in his second invasion of the North, which ended disastrously at Gettysburg - because, Cass suggests, Stuart was "raiding hen-roosts" when he should have been providing Lee with intelligence on the battlefield (272). The reference to "hen-roosts" is a flight of fancy, Faulkner's as well as Cass'; it connects Stuart's failure up with the death, in Light in August, of Gail Hightower's Confederate grandfather during a (fictionalized) raid against Union troops in Jefferson. Cass' reference to "Longstreet too at Gettysburg" as part of this event may refer to Confederate General Longstreet's well-known reluctance to give the order that began Pickett's ill-fated charge; that historical event, often cited as a or the turning point in the South's fortunes, is mentioned several times in the fictions.