In her account of the men who begin returning home from the Civil War during its final winter, Rosa refers to the men's "beloved wife or mistress who in his absence has been raped" (126). She does not say by whom.
During the last winter of the Civil War, Rosa says, "stragglers" frequently passed by the Sutpen plantation where she, Judith and Clytemnestra lived. Some she says were "tramps, ruffians," but others were "soldiers beginning to come back" from the war, "men who had risked and lost everything" (126). Right after the passage mentions the "wife or mistress" of such men "who in [their] absence has been raped," Rosa adds: "We were afraid," but "we fed them" (126).
Colonel Willow is the commander of the University Grays, at least in 1865 when he allows his fellow officer, Colonel Sutpen, to use his headquarters tent to meet with Henry.
When the "fathers and mothers and sisters and kin and sweethearts" of the students who are forming themselves into the University Grays travel to Oxford, they bring "food and bedding and servants" (97). 'Servants' is unquestionably a euphemism for 'slaves.'
As the "young men" at University of Mississippi organize themselves into the University Grays, their "fathers and mothers and sisters and kin and sweethearts" travel to Oxford from around the state to witness and support their "sons and brothers" preparing for war (97). The "sweethearts of each man" all take turns sewing the unit's battle flag (98).
In the immediate aftermath of the South's surrender, according to Rosa's account, "men with pistols in their pockets gathered daily at secret meeting places in the towns"; a deputation from this group unsuccessfully demands that Sutpen join them (130). Rosa never gives the group a name, but when she later describes their "sheets and hoods and night-galloping horses" it seems obvious that the Ku Klux Klan is being evoked (134).
In Chapter 5 Rosa Coldfield tells Quentin about the time immediately following the South's defeat in the Civil War. She was there at the time, but the various groups of people she identifies and the roles she assigns them are also the stereotypes that were constructed by the school of historians who sought to justify the rise of segregation that followed the failure of reconstruction: "That was the winter when we began to learn what carpet-bagger meant and people - women - locked doors and windows at night and began to frighten each other with tales of negro uprisings" (130).
Sutpen hires Wash Jones and "another man or two" to help in his post-war effort to restore Sutpen's Hundred to its pre-war status (130). Rosa identifies them as "men like Jones" (134).
Better known from both The Unvanquished and Go Down, Moses as "Uncle Buck," McCaslin appears in Absalom! just once, when he shows up at the burial of Charles Bon and says he knows how to "pray for any Confedrit soldier" - then "in his old man's shrill harsh loud cacophonous voice" shouts out rebel yells for General Forrest and Colonel Sartoris (122).
