Strictly speaking, there are no McCaslins in this 1940 short story. But in the multi-textual story of the "McCaslin family" in Faulkner's imagination, it occupies a very significant place in the record. In it Beauchamps and Edmondses appear for the first time. In the novel Go Down, Moses (1942) the Beauchamps and the Edmondses will become two main branches - mulatto and white - on the McCaslin family tree.
Two McCaslins are mentioned in The Hamlet, both in passing, which is enough to introduce more inconsistencies into Ike's biography. In the context of his place in other Yoknapatawpha fictions, where Ike is found in this novel - the big plantation - and where he isn't - the Jefferson store - are confusing.
When Faulkner revised the short stories Bayard Sartoris narrates into the novel The Unvanquished, he also began to bring the McCaslin family into focus as a family. Using the episode in "Retreat" that is recalled in both "Raid" and the short story also called "The Unvanquished," when Bayard encounters Uncle Buck in Jefferson, Faulkner interpolates a long passage providing Buck with a twin brother Buddy and a father who built "one of the finest houses in the country" as part of the "big bottom-land" slave plantation that establishes their place in the county aristocracy (46-47).
This is the first story in which a McCaslin appears as a major character. As in the other Unvanquished stories, the McCaslin is "Uncle Buck." Still an loud, profane old man, he insists on joining Bayard and Ringo in the quest to avenge Granny's death, and proves to be as accomplished at hunting outlaws as "Uncle Ike" has shown himself to be hunting game in earlier stories. But no information about his background is provided.
This is the third Unvanquished story in which "Uncle Buck McCaslin" is the only member of the McCaslin family mentioned. For the second time Bayard recalls the encounter with him in "Retreat," and along with Ringo asks Granny to get advice "from Uncle Buck McCaslin, anyone, any man" (94) before trying to do business with Grumby. But Buck himself does not appear.
The "Theophilus McCaslin" in Absalom! is not a grandson of Ike, but an "old man" who attends the funeral that Judith Sutpen holds for Bon (122). He sounds exactly like the Uncle Buck who has already appeared in two stories with the same Civil War setting, though the novel doesn't make connect this Theophilus with that Buck.
"Uncle Ike McCaslin" is again the only McCaslin mentioned in this story. It is at "McCaslin's store" in Jefferson that Ab Snopes buys the milk separator for his wife Vynie (128). In the character of town merchant Ike is still a long way from the role he will be best known for: the child of the plantation aristocracy who is spiritually reborn in the wilderness by the lessons he learns from a mixed-race Indian and an old bear.
"Uncle Ike McCaslin" makes his second appearance here, again in the woods. He plays a larger role in the story, and it now seems plausible that his title "Uncle" is a form of deference to his age and to his skill as a woodsman, as it will be in later fictions. But the role he will come to occupy in Faulkner's imaginative world is still unformed. In this story "Uncle Ike" is the grandfather of a young hunter named Theophilus McCaslin.
"Uncle Buck McCaslin" is mentioned again in the next story in the Unvanquished series, "Raid," but only when Bayard compares the actions of the Sartoris family slave, Louvinia, to how he acted "the morning we started to Memphis" in the previous story, "Retreat." The indirect way this reference brings a white man and an enslaved black woman together could be read as portentous in the context of the ultimate story Faulkner tells about the McCaslin family, but it still seems obvious that Faulkner's imagination has not been engaged by "McCaslins."
The second McCaslin to appear in the fictions is "Uncle Buck McCaslin" (21). He is a testy old man who shouts his words, speaks in a lower class vernacular, and chews tobacco which runs out of his mouth into his beard. His role in the story is to erect a rhetorical statue of John Sartoris. His 'title' of "Uncle" is not explained, nor is there any mention of his larger family. It seems clear that Faulkner has not brought the idea of "the McCaslins" into any kind of focus.
