Unnamed Union General

There is a Union officer referred to as "the general" in two of the novel's chapters. In "Ambuscade" this man is mentioned by Sergeant Harrison. In "Raid" the signature of the "General Commanding" the "-th Army Corps, Department of Tennessee" results in Rosa Millard going back to Mississippi with a lot more silver, mules and Negroes than she expected (112). Historically, as Faulkner might have expected his readers to know, the Army of Tennessee was commanded first by Ulysses S. Grant and then (after the fall of Vicksburg) by William T. Sherman. Both Grant's and Sherman's name elsewhere in the novel, and Faulkner may have been thinking of either as this unnamed general - or of no particular general at all.