Unnamed Spinster Aunts and Uncles

Character Key Number: 
2798
Display Name: 
Unnamed Spinster Aunts and Uncles
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Spinster Aunts and Uncles
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
No
Biography: 

In his conversation with Cass about human, and specifically Southern history in Go Down, Moses, Ike generalizes about a number of different kinds of people who, according to him, brought about the Civil War. This entry refers to what he calls "the Boston-bred (even when not born in Boston) spinster descendants of long lines of similarly-bred and likewise spinster aunts and uncles whose hands knew no callus except that of the indicting pen" - by which he means northern abolitionist writers (273).