Texas in Absalom, Absalom! (Location)

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). 1836, the year Sutpen comes back with the furniture, is the year Texas declared its independence from Mexico; it became a U.S. state in 1845, but at the time Henry might have fled there it was a member of the Confederate States.