General Grant

Submitted by sfr on Fri, 2019-08-02 08:51
Character Key Number: 
360
Display Name: 
General Grant
Sort Name: 
Grant, General
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

Ulysses Grant ended the Civil War as the Commander-in-Chief of all Union forces, and soon afterward became the nation's 18th President. He never appears directly in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, but is mentioned in ten of them, always in connection with his leadership of the Union Army of Tennessee during and after the Vicksburg Campaign of 1862-1863. The reference to him in Sanctuary says he "came through the county" of Yoknapatawpha during that period (8; see also "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard," 136). Historically, during his first (aborted) advance on Vicksburg in December, 1862, Grant set up his headquarters in Oxford briefly. He withdrew his forces northward after the Confederate raid on his supply depot in nearby Holly Springs, Mississippi - the real event behind the fictionalized raid that Gail Hightower obsesses over in Light in August.

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