Sartoris Plantation Vicksburg Map (Location Key)

This is the "living map" where in "Ambuscade" and The Unvanquished Bayard and Ringo re-create the fighting at Vicksburg, Mississippi. It is located "behind the smokehouse" of the Sartoris plantation and is constructed of "just a handful of chips from the woodpile"; the "Mississippi River" has been "scraped into the packed earth with the point of a hoe" and filled with water fetched from the well (3, 3). As the last remaining Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River the actual Vicksburg was the scene of almost a dozen battles between the end of 1862 and July 1863. The boys are playing at the final stage of the Union campaign to take the city, led by Ulysses S. Grant - though they seem certain that the Confederate defense, led by John C. Pemberton, will prevail. (The Unvanquished later describes the map of the region around Yoknapatawpha that Ringo drew on a "window shade . . . with Granny showing him where to draw in the towns" (125); they use this map in their non-violent campaign against the Yankee troops who appeared in Mississippi after Vicksburg surrendered. For more on mapping in Faulkner's world, see the exhibit "Faulkner & Maps" elsewhere in the project. For more on the battle Bayard and Ringo are playing at, see the index entry for "Vicksburg, Mississippi.")