Buddy McCaslin

Throughout the novel's Civil War present, Buck McCaslin's twin brother Buddy is fighting in Tennant's Brigade in Virginia after beating his brother in a card game for the privilege of serving in the Confederate regiment that was raised in Yoknapatawpha. But a passage that Faulkner wrote for the novel and interpolated into the "Retreat" chapter describes in some detail the "ideas about social relationships" between classes and races that made both brothers "ahead of their time" (48). They had their slaves live in the big house that their father had built, and moved themselves into a cabin; they set up "a system of book-keeping" that credited slaves for their work, allowing them to "earn" their freedom (48). And they organized "the dirt farmers" on the nearby parcels of "poor hill land" to work together with them to improve the quality of their and their children's lives (48-49). Practically, these ideas gave the slaves more freedom while they remained enslaved, and made the men in the neighboring "white trash" families just as eager as Buck and Buddy were to fight for the Confederacy (49).