Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the U.S. who led the nation during the Civil War, is mentioned in 10 Yoknapatawpha fictions, almost as many as Robert E. Lee - and more than twice as many as Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy. He never appears in person, and is typically represented from the perspective of one or another former Confederate. In "Wash," Colonel Thomas Sutpen longs to "shoot [Lincoln and General Sherman] down, like the dogs they are" (540). But in "Skirmish at Sartoris" and again in The Unvanquished Colonel John Sartoris regrets the assassination of Lincoln, believing that had he lived, the (white) defeated South would have been treated better in the aftermath of the war.