When Ratliff calls Devries two nephews "them foreign twin boys" in "By the People," he means they are not from Yoknapatawpha (138). In that story and again in The Mansion, they are apparently old enough to understand "what might happen" if Clarence Snopes' legs are anointed by "damp switches" from the dog thicket, and to know how to do so without getting caught (138, 349).
The sister of Devries in "By the People" and The Mansion is, like her brother, not from Yoknapatawpha but a county further east; she comes to the picnic at Varner's Mill to watch her brother announce his candidacy, bringing her twin sons with her.
Although in other Yoknapatawpha fictions the population of Frenchman's Bend is almost entirely white, local Negroes appear in "By the People" and again in The Mansion in two ways. The "roistering gang" that Clarence Snopes leads frequently "beats Negroes" (89, 328). When Clarence becomes the Bend's constable, he also hits the "first few Negroes who ran afoul of his new official capacity . . . with the blackjack he carried or the butt of the pistol which he now officially wore" (89, 329).
These are the two different groups of "Negro troops" who serve in the U.S. Army in World War II and Korea that Devries commands in "By the People" (134). When Faulkner has the story's narrator say that in Korea, Devries "commands troops containing Negroes" rather than "Negro troops," as in the earlier war (134), he may be acknowledging the actual, slow history of racial integration in the military. World War II was the first time the U.S. Army allowed blacks to serve in combat, but kept them in segregated units that were commanded, as the narrator notes, by white officers.
In "By the People" this Sergeant is serving in the Korean War when "single-handedly" he and Devries hold off an enemy attack to allow the escape of a trapped battalion (134). He is wounded during the action. This Sergeant appears again when The Mansion describes the same event, with one difference - in the novel the man's heroics occur during World War II (339).
In "By the People" and again in The Mansion this soldier, "a hulking giant of an Arkansas Negro cotton-field hand" in civilian life (134, 339), heroically rescues Devries and a sergeant by carrying them both away from enemy fire. Devries (unofficially) recognizes his heroism by pinning one of his own medals on the man. We can hear affection and admiration in Devries' voice when he addresses the man who saved him as "you big bastard"; the narrator's tone when he persists in calling this soldier a "field hand" is harder to interpret (134, 340).
In "By the People" and again in The Mansion this soldier accompanies Devries to the front line and helps lead the trapped battalion back to safety. He is called a "runner" (134, 339) which probably means he is a soldier assigned to a commanding officer, though it may also mean messenger. The only difference between the two texts is that in the story this happens in Korea, while in the novel it's somewhere during the fighting in World War II.
Like the Ku Klux Klan, the next organization that Clarence Snopes joins in "By the People" and The Mansion - "Silver Shirts" - was a real white supremacist, antisemitic organization (131, 334). Its official name was the Silver Legion of America, but its nickname acknowledges its ideological indebtedness to Brown Shirts in Germany, the fascist group that helped bring Hitler and the Nazis to power in the 1930s. It was founded in North Carolina in early 1933.
In "By the People" and again in The Mansion Clarence Snopes uses Yoknapatawpha's Ku Klux Klan to advance his own political career, which serves as the occasion for Faulkner's one explicit engagement with the Klan as an element in U.S. history. Historically the Klan is a terrorist, white supremacist organization that came into existence in the South after the surrender at Appomattox and the abolition of slavery.
In "By the People" and again in The Mansion, during his youth in Frenchman's Bend Clarence Snopes is the leader of a "gang of cousins and toadies" (89, 328) who terrorize the community around Frenchman's Bend. They fought and drank and beat Negroes and terrified young girls" (89) - slightly revised to "fought and drank and gambled and beat up Negroes and terrified women and young girls" in the novel (328).
