The Unvanquished

Title: "An Odor of Verbena" In The Unvanquished Date: 1938 Systems: Railroad Context: 1870s, urban South Most of The Unvanquished takes place during the Civil War, and, for our purposes, concentrates on wagons and horses used to convey soldiers and equipment during the Mississippi campaign. In the chapter "An Odor of Verbena," the narrator, Bayard, son of Colonel Sartoris, recounts the arrival of the railroad in the state in the early 1870s. The Colonel, with Redmond, …

…he stepped straight from the pilot of that engine into the race for the Legislature." These passages point out themes that have appeared in literary (and political) discussions of the post-Civil-War railroads&emdash;financing from outside the region or the country in the face of extraordinary, and inter-state capital, the local and populist enthusiasm which accompanied the railroad's arrival, and the way railroad investors used their positions for political advantage. Edition used: New York: Vintage, 1965