"General Smith" is the commander of the Union forces that Philip attacks. Bayard's narrative never gives him a first name. There were two Union Generals named Smith who fought Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest in Mississippi at various times after the fall of Vicksburg. General William Sooy Smith was defeated by Forrest on February 22, 1864, in the Battle of Okolona. However, most scholars assume the General Smith in Faulkner's story is Andrew Jackson Smith, who fought Forrest at the Battle of Tupelo in July, 1864.
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Wed, 2017-06-28 13:50
Occasionally referred to in other texts as the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, and in The Town as the "new bank" (44), the "Sartoris Bank" is one of the town's two banks. It was established around 1908 by "Colonel" Bayard Sartoris, who is still its President when the novel begins. Originally its largest stockholders are Sartorises, de Spains, and Will Varner, though by the time of Bayard Sartoris' death, Flem Snopes has been buying up stock "for several years" (124).
Submitted by jjoiner@keuka.edu on Wed, 2017-06-28 12:12
This building - "a big more-or-less unpainted square building just off the Square" (41) - is transformed twice in the course of the narrative. It begins as a boarding house "where itinerant cattle drovers and horse- and mule-traders stopped and where were incarcerated, boarded and fed, juries and important witnesses during court term" (41). When I.O.
Granny Millard's dead husband owned a "supply house" in Memphis (688). One of his customers was Nathan Bedford Forrest, who (although the story never mentions it) was a well-known Memphis planter and slave-dealer at that time. He and Forrest "sometimes" sat together on the front porch and "sometimes" ate together too (688).
