The Sound and the Fury: William Faulkner’s Great-Grandfather
“I want to be a writer like my great granddaddy.”
– William Faulkner
William Clark Falkner was a lawyer, farmer, businessman, politician, soldier, poet and great-grandfather to one of the greatest writers in American literary history. Born September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, the writer William Faulkner never knew his great-grandfather. The young Faulkner spent his boyhood listening to stories told by his elders about the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Falkner family. Faulkner’s grandfather also told him about the exploits of William’s great-grandfather William Clark Falkner – or as the family referred to him – the “Old Colonel.”
William Clark Falkner was born in Knox County, Tennessee on July 6, 1825 or 1826. His family moved to St Genevieve, Missouri, and at age 17 William left Missouri for Ripley, Mississippi, where one of his uncles lived. He was shocked to find his uncle, John Wesley Thompson, in jail charged with murder. By studying law books in his cell, Thompson successfully defended himself. Once acquitted, Thompson opened a law practice. His successful practice paid for his nephew’s education. The nephew also learned the power of the law.[1]
William Clark Falkner was an imposing, self-made man with big ambitions. He was determined to accomplish whatever he set out to do, and nothing would stand in his way. He had a quick temper, which often made him enemies.
In 1845, he helped capture an ax murderer and single-handily prevented the mob from lynching the man. He fancied himself a writer and used this incident to write a pamphlet entitled “The Life and Confession of A.J. MacCannon: Murderer of the Adcock Family.” [2]
With the war with Mexico, William help recruit the Magnolia Rifles, which became Company F of the 2nd Regiment of Mississippi Volunteers. He was elected first lieutenant. Before departing for Mexico, he married 21-year-old Holland Pearce in 1847. [3]
The 2nd Mississippi left for Mexico in 1847 and was delayed in New Orleans. An outbreak of smallpox in that city resulted in killing about a dozen of the soldiers. They were assigned to Gen. Zachery Taylor’s army and as a result missed Gen. Winfield Scott’s Siege of Vera Cruz. By the time they arrived at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, they were too late to partake in the action at Buena Vista. As a result, his unit spent most of its time in and around Saltillo, Mexico and saw no real action.[4]
Sometime after the regiment returned and mustered out in July 1848, Falkner petitioned the War Department for a pension for wounds received while in Northern Mexico. He claimed to have sustained the wounds when he was ambushed by Mexican guerillas. Falkner claimed that he was riding outside the city limits when he was ambushed. He was struck twice with one ball entering his foot and another carrying away the ends of three fingers from his left hand. While not life-threatening, he had trouble performing his duties and asked for a medical discharge.
However, when later in life he was running for public office, Thomas C. Hindman, who was a second lieutenant serving with Falkner in Mexico, claimed that Falkner’s injuries were the result of a drunken brawl with Mexican civilians while he was AWOL from his company. Hindman claimed that Falkner’s assailant was a rival for the hand of a local senorita. Apparently, the War Department put no credence to this complaint, and Falkner continued to receive his Mexican War pension. The feud continued between Hindman and Falkner when they both returned home.[5]
Returning from Mexico, William Falkner practiced law in Ripley and was involved with business and civic organizations. Unfortunately, his wife Holland died in 1849, a year after giving birth to their first child. A widower with a small child, Falkner remarried in 1851. His second wife, 18-year-old Elizabeth Houston Vance, and he would have together eight children. One of those was John Wesley Thompson Falkner who later fathered Murray Cuthbert Falkner. It was Murray’s oldest son who would become Noble Laureate author William Faulkner. (He added the “u” to the last name.) Faulkner was born after his great granddaddy had died but listened closely to the stories told about him. As a result, William Clark Falkner would serve as inspiration for his great-grandson’s character Col. John Sartoris in his novels Flags in the Dust and The Unvanquished. [6]
In 1849, after his first wife died and before his second marriage, William was involved in an altercation with Robert Hindman. The older brother of future Confederate Gen, Thomas C. Hindman, Robert accused Falkner of slandering his name. He mistakenly came to believe that Falkner had blackballed him from joining the Ripley branch of the Sons of Temperance. Robert Hindman confronted Falkner on a Ripley Street and drawing a gun, aimed at Falkner’s chest. He pulled the trigger twice (some say three times). Falkner was not hit, however. Either Hindman was a terrible shot or more probable, the gun misfired due to faulty ammunition. The two men grappled, and Falkner managed to draw his pocketknife and stab Hindman to death. Indicted on murder charges, the jury acquitted him on self-defense.
They buried Robert Hindman, erecting a tombstone over his grave inscribed: said, “Killed by W.C. Falkner.” From that day forward, Thomas Hindman was Falkner’s sworn enemy. It was not Thomas who first sought revenge for his brother’s death, but a friend of Robert’s by the name of Erasmus Morris. Morris challenged Falkner to a duel in his friend’s honor. Falkner accepted and killed Morris. Arrested and tried, he was again acquitted on self-defense. This culminated in a gun fight between Thomas and Falkner, but neither was hurt. A duel was arranged, but bloodshed was averted by the intervention of Matthew C. Galloway, future editor of the Memphis Appeal. While the two were reconciled there were still ill feelings between the two.[7]
Besides practicing law and tending to his business interests, he continued to write. He wrote poems, a play, and books. His best-known novel is a murder mystery set on a steamboat titled The White Rose of Memphis. It would eventually sell over 160,000 copies.[8]
When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Falkner raised a company from Tippah County named the Magnolia Guards. This company was incorporated into the 2nd Mississippi Volunteer Infantry with Falkner elected as colonel.[9] The regiment was sent to Virginia and, when combined with the 11th Mississippi and 4th Alabama, became Brig. Gen. Bernard Bee’s Brigade in Gen. Joseph Johnston’s Army of the Shenandoah.
Falkner was anxious to earn his star and became a strict disciplinarian. His men came to resent him for it. According to historian David Deter, “a Confederate army inspector from Richmond thought ‘The officers are entirely without military knowledge of any description, and the men have a slovenly and unsoldierly appearance.’” [10] In contrast Gen. Johnston wrote of him: “Col. Wm C. Falkner . . . is one of the most distinguished volunteer officers now at the seat of war. He has his regiment in the most perfect drill, and though exceedingly strict with his men, is universally popular.” His men disagreed, however, and came to resent Falkner as a martinet. When Johnston’s army set out from the Shenandoah Valley to reinforce Beauregard at Bull Run, Falkner’s regiment was on the first train to arrive.
On July 21, Bee’s brigade along with Col. Francis S. Bartow’s Brigade moved from a position near the Henry House to reinforce Brig. Gen. Nathaniel G. Evan’s Brigade on Matthew’s Hill against the Union flanking column. Bee’s brigade was sandwiched between Evans and Bartow with the 4th Alabama on the left, 2nd Mississippi in the center and the 11th Mississippi on the right. Facing them was Col. Ambrose Burnside’s brigade with support from Capt. William Reynold’s and Capt. Charles Griffin’s batteries.[11]
The firing was hot between the green troops. Bee soon spotted another Federal brigade moving down the Manassas-Sudley Road (Col. Andrew Porter’s brigade), flanking their position and this, along with the arrival of Maj. George Sykes’ eight-company battalion of regulars on his other flank, spelled doom for the Confederate line. First, his men started leaving the ranks individually, then in small groups. As his line began to waver, Bee tried to convince them to stay, but with the mounting pressure he ordered his brigade to fall back.[12]
General Bee found Brig. Gen.Thomas J. Jackson’s Brigade on Henry House Hill and wanted Jackson to move to his support, but Jackson refused, and his brigade stayed like a stone wall as Bee’s men fell back to rally in a ravine on Jackson’s right flank. Bee’s men were disorganized as the Federals followed, only to be checked by Wade Hampton’s South Carolinians. With the arrival of both generals Johnston and Beauregard on the field, Beauregard rode among the scattered units, calling on the officers to rally their troops and the men to stand firm.
Falkner rallied his men and quickly regained his regiment’s organization. With a threat now along the Sudley road, Falkner was ordered to move to Jackson’s left flank with parts of the 11th Mississippi. With the 6th North Carolina on their left, his men helped supported the 4th Virginia and Col. J.E.B. Stuart’s charging cavalry as they pushed back the 14th Brooklyn and 1st Minnesota, taking Griffin’s guns. Falkner advanced against the 1st Minnesota, but the they along with men from the 1st Michigan and 11th New York responded and forced the Mississippians back, capturing the 2nd’s Lt. Col. Bartley and mortally wounding Gen. Bee. When colonels Arnold Elzey and Jubal A. Early arrived and attacked the Federal flank from Chinn Ridge, the day belonged to the Confederates. Falkner’s men maintained their position on Henry House Hill. [13]
Falkner did a creditable job. According to Col. J.E.B. Stuart, “Just after the cavalry charge our re-enforcements arrived upon the field and formed rapidly on the right of our line. The first was Colonel Falkner’s regiment (Mississippians), whose gallantry came under my own observation.” [14]
After Bull Run, Falkner and the 2nd Mississippi were at Yorktown, Virginia when their one-year enlist expired. The regiment reorganized and most of the men re-enlisted for three years. When it came time to elect officers in the re-organization, Falkner was voted out in favor of Col. John M. Stone of Iuka (Stone would later become a governor of Mississippi). Demoted and still wanting his star, Falkner resigned his commission and went back that summer to Ripley, Mississippi. There he formed a cavalry company, which he designated as the 1st Mississippi Partisan Rangers. Falkner led his partisans against the Federals’ lines of communication, destroying tracks, telegraph lines and supplies. [15]
On August 26, 1862, with an estimated 800 men Col. Falkner tore into Col. Philip Sheridan’s camp near Rienzi, thinking the camp weakly defended. The day was excessively hot, “one of those sultry debilitating days” as Sheridan recorded. Most of his men were lounging or sleeping in their tents. At the first sound of shots, like bees from a hive, Sheridan’s men swarmed from their tents armed and firing. This firing and the shots from Capt. Henry Hescock’s battery soon repulsed Falkner’s men.
Sheridan then sent Col. Edward Hatch’s and Col. Albert L. Lee’s veteran cavalry and a section of artillery to pursue the Partisans, causing such a precipitous retreat that many of the Confederates lost their hats, including Col. Falkner. Falkner rallied his men in a line at Newland’s store near Hernando, Mississippi, but his men soon panicked “and ran in the wildest disorder in a mad rush” to escape. The chase went on, and the demoralized rebels discarded guns and coats and blankets and fled to the woods where they were hunted down until dark. Falkner, now without a command, made his way back home to Ripley. He soon after resigned his commission, and the war was over for him. [16]
After the war Falkner practiced law with another attorney, Richard J. Thurmond, and was a success. His financial success helped him to buy and operate a 2000-acre farm near Ripley. He also invested in rebuilding northern Mississippi railroads and re-establishing Stonewall College. He was known around the area as Colonel Falkner or just “The Old Colonel.”
In 1889 he won a seat in the Mississippi State Legislature on the Democratic ticket but never served. In the election he ran against and defeated his old law partner, Richard Thurmond. The two had an acrimonious falling out for unspecified reasons – probably more than just politics. On November 5, Election Day, the victorious Falkner was confronted by Thurmond on the Ripley Courthouse Square. After heated words, Thurmond drew a pistol and shot Falkner in the neck. Falkner lingered for one day until the swelling in his throat cut off his air supply. He died November 6, 1889, at 64 years of age. Thurmond was later acquitted of manslaughter and hastily left the state. [17]
Falkner’s funeral was probably the largest crowd ever assembled in Tippah County at the time. Today, over his grave, there is a statue of Colonel William Clark Falkner in Ripley, Mississippi cemetery. It is a statue of Falkner standing with his right arm extended forward from the elbow and his maimed left hand in his pocket. Behind the figure sits a stack of books.
The “Old Colonel” and the tales he heard of his Civil War exploits had a profound influence on his great-grandson’s writings. The young writer would proudly recall that the [Old Colonel] “rode through that country like a living force, so formidable that for years after his death, the townsfolk of Ripley, Mississippi “talked of him as if he were still alive.” [18] Forty-three years after the “Old Colonel’s” death, William Faulkner would publish The Sound and the Fury ranked #6 on a list of the 100 Best English Language Novels of the 20th Century. In 1948 he would write a classic passage of every Southern boy’s dream in his novel Intruder in the Dust :
“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but
whenever he wants it, there is an instant when it’s still not
yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades
are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready
in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break
out and Picket himself with his long-oiled ringlets and his hat in
one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill
waiting for Longstreet to give word and it’s all in balance, it hasn’t
happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun
but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and
those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and
Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to
begin, we all know that we have come too far with too much at
stake and at that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old
boy to think, This time. Maybe this time….”
A year later in 1949, William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature and later two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction.
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For more on Faulkner and the Civil War, listen to the Emerging Civil War Podcast interview with Michael Gorra, author of The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War (click here).
Endnotes:
[1] https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/falkner-william-clark/ Hagood, Taylor, Florida Atlantic University, William Clark Falkner. Accessed 1025/2024. Morris, Roy, “In His Namesake’s Talented Hands, W.C. Falkner’s Contentious Life Became the Stuff of Legend,” America’s Civil War, vol. 8, no. 3, July, 1995. p. 6; https://www.msgw.org/tippah/FalknerBio.htm Gurney, Bill, Biography of Colonel William Clark Falkner, 1825-1889, ed. Tommy Covington. Accessed 10/244/2024
[2] Ibid.
[3] Dunbar, Rowland, The Official and Statistical Register of the State of Mississippi, vol. 2, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1908. pp. 426-436. https://www.findagrave/memorial/5383/william-falkner/ accessed 10/24/2024
[4] https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/mexican-american-war/ Winders, Richard Bruce, Panting for Glory: The Mississippi Rifles in the Mexican War, College Station, Texas, Texas A & M University Press, 2016. pp. 100-104
[5] Ibid., Winders, Panting for Glory p. 104
[6] https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/falkner-william-clark/ https://www.findagrave/memorial/5383/william-falkner/
[7] https://www.msgw.org/tippah/FalknerBio.html ; https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/falkner-william-clark/ Morris, America’s Civil War, p.6. Neal Diane, Thomas W. Kremm, The Lion of the South: General Thomas C. Hindman, Macon, Georgia, Mercer University Press, 1993. p. 13 Their animosity always bubbled below the surface until Hundman moved to Arkansas.
[8] https://findagrave/memorial/5383/william-falkner/
[10] Detzer David, Donnybrook: The Battle of Bull Run, 1861, A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc,, 2004. p.307.
[11] Longacre, Edward G., The Early Morning of War: Bull Run, 1861, Norman, Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press, 2014, p. 338; Hennessy, John, The First Battle of Manassas: An End to Innocence, July 21, 1861, Lynchburg, Virginia, H.E. Howard, Inc., 1989. p. 56
[12] Ibid.
[13] Longacre, Early Morning, pp. 367-368, 410; Hennessey. End of Innocence, p.60; Gottfried, Bradley M., The Maps of First Bull Run: An Atlas of the First Bull Run (Manassas) Campaign, Including the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, June-October 1861, California, Savas Beatie, 2009. pp. 48-67.
[14] The War Of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. 2, series 2, Washington D. C., United States Government Printing Office, 1880-1901, p. 483.
[15] Dunbar, Register of the State of Mississippi, vol. 2, pp. 426-436
[16] Sheridan, Philip, Civil War Memoirs: General Philip Sheridan, ed., Paul Andrew Hutton, New York, Bantam Books, 1991. pp. 36-37. Morris, Roy, Jr., Sheridan: The Life and Wars of General Phil Sheridan, New York, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1992. pp.74-75
[17] www.newspapers.com Vicksburg Evening Post, November 9, 1889.
[18] Morris, Roy, America’s Civil War. p. 6
A great insight into the Southern mindset of Faulkner’s time.
Superb article.
Awesome backstory! It really contextualizes Faulkner’s writings.