The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

General Lee was the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The unnamed Union lieutenant mentions him when yelling at Rosa Millard, saying, "God help the North if Davis and Lee ever thought of the idea of forming a brigade of grandmothers . . ." (89).

Jefferson Davis was the only President of the Confederate States of America. The unnamed Union lieutenant mentions him when yelling at Rosa Millard, saying, "God help the North if Davis and Lee had ever thought of the idea of forming a brigade of grandmothers" (89).

This unnamed Union soldier laughs at Ringo's evasion of the Union lieutenant's questioning, to which the lieutenant responds violently.

Apparently the last Union troops who appear in Yoknapatawpha during the War, this unit tracks Rosa Millard down to the Sartoris plantation to recover at least some of the dozens of stolen Yankee mules who remain in the county.

Bayard recalls talking to this unnamed Confederate captain with Uncle Buck McCaslin.

Like the Sartorises, the McCaslins are planters who were among the first white settlers of Yoknapatawtpha; they are at the center of the later novel, Go Down, Moses. "Uncle" is a courtesy title for Buck. The scene Bayard recalls in this story, of him and Ringo speaking with Buck and an unnamed Confederate captain in town shortly before the Yankees burned it, appears in "Retreat."

Loosh is Joby's son and Philadelphy's husband. Philadelphy, however, is not mentioned in this story, and Loosh (who as readers of "Retreat" are aware, took her away from Sartoris earlier in the quest for freedom from slavery) appears only when Bayard compares the way the poor people of Yoknapatawpha look at Granny to the way he remembers his family's hounds looking when Loosh went in their kennels to feed them (85).

Doctor Worsham's title is theological, not medical. Before the Civil War began, he was the minister of Jefferson's Episcopal Church. Bayard recalls him "in his stole beneath the altar" (84). Like many white Yoknapatawphans, he is likely away in the war.

These Negroes are among the people in attendance at the secular service in the Episcopal Church when Rosa distributes money and mules to the needy people of Yoknapatawpha. In his narrative, Bayard indicates that at the beginning of the Civil War they were enslaved, but now, presumably because their former masters are gone because of the War, Bayard calls them "the dozen niggers that had got free by accident and didn't know what to do about it" (84). Along with Ringo, they sit in the church's "slave gallery," which was built to hold 200 slaves, but now is otherwise deserted.

These unnamed people make up the white portion of the congregation of the Episcopal Church where Rosa ritually confesses her sins as a liar and thief, then unrepentantly disperses the profits of her activities to the community that, though they are too old, too young or too female to be fighting in the Civil War, are suffering its privations.