Shiloh, located in southwestern Tennessee, was the location of a major battle during the Civil War. The novel also calls it "Pittsburg Landing" (217), the name by which it was known in the South. The fighting took place on April 6-7th, 1862; by the end of "the second day and the lost battle" (275), casualties on both sides totaled 23,746. General Compson lost an arm there, and in one of the novel's many unresolved narrative questions, either Henry helped save the wounded Bon (217), or Bon rescued the wounded Henry (275).
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of the Civil War's bloodiest battle, fought over the three days July 1–3, 1863. "Pickett's charge" (289) on the final day resulted in 6500 men being killed or wounded in about an hour. ("Manassas," where Shreve mistakenly thinks Pickett's charge occurred, is the town in Virginia near the fields where two different battles, First and Second Bull Run, were fought, 289). The Confederate regiment from Yoknapatawpha that Sutpen commands in 1863 is supposed to have been "present at Gettysburg" (154).
"Missouri" is one of the places in which the lawyer claims to be looking for Thomas Sutpen (244), and "Saint Louis" - usually spelled St. Louis, Missouri - is one of the places Ellen thinks Thomas Sutpen may have gone "on business" when Bon comes to Sutpen's Hundred the second time (263). Missouri was admitted to the U.S. as a slave state in 1831; in 1860 the population of St. Louis was over 160,000, making it the largest city on the Mississippi River.
California is briefly mentioned twice in the novel, first speculatively, as one of the places Henry Sutpen might have fled after killing Bon (147), then hypothetically, as one of the three places where the lawyer pretends to be looking for Henry's father (244). Historically, at these times, California was a new U.S. state, having been admitted to the union in 1850, almost as soon as gold was discovered there.
Texas figures in a number of Yoknapatawpha fictions, including Absalom!, as a place to run to after you've done something wrong. For example, it is speculated that Sutpen acquires the luxurious furnishings for his mansion by a scheme that, if it hadn't worked out, would have meant changing his name "and moving to Texas" (208). Similarly, it is speculated that after killing Bon, Henry "fled to Texas" or someplace even further away - "California or maybe even South America" (147).
Borneo is an island off the coast of southeast Asia. In Absalom! its fabled head-hunters provide a metaphorical point-of-reference: Clytemnestra's "body just grew smaller and smaller like something being shrunk in a furnace, like the Bornese do their captured heads" (175).
Rock Island Prison, where Rosa's aunt's husband is held, was a real Union prisoner-of-war camp during the Civil War. It was opened in 1863 in Rock Island, Illinois, and became one of the Union Army's largest prisons; by the end of the war, over 12,000 Confederate soldiers had been held there.
The University of Mississippi opened in 1844, fifteen years before Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon meet there. According to Mr. Compson, in 1859 it is "a small new college in the Mississippi hinterland" (58). The "grove at the University" where Mr. Compson speculates Henry first sees Bon is a real part of the campus (76). The two young men both attend the Law School, which opened in 1854. In the novel, as in fact, the University is in Oxford, Mississippi, which is "forty miles" from Sutpen's Hundred (249).
