How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.[Part].Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
They couldn't keep [Turl] at home by buying Tennie, and they couldn't sell Tomey's Turl to Mr Hubert because Mr Hubert said he not only wouldn't buy Tomey's Turl, he wouldn't even have that half-white McCaslin on his place even as a free gift […] (1.2.4)
Even Buddy and Buck, pretty enlightened guys who release their slaves even before Abolition, treat Turl like a slave and not a half-brother. Turl's more than half-white. No matter; he lives with the slaves on the plantation and can be thought about like something that can be bought and sold. This "half-white McCaslin" comment is the first hint we get that something's up racially with this family.
Quote #2
[…] his own wife, the black woman, keeping his baby in the white man's house and he now living alone in the house which old Cass had built for them when they married [...] ( 2.1.2.14)
We don't know how long Molly would have stayed at Zack's Edmonds's house taking care of Baby Ruth—er, Baby Roth—but Lucas definitely saw this as an abandonment by Molly. He risked his life by trying to kill Zack for stealing Molly. For her part, Molly refused to abandon Zack's infant son, so she agreed to come home but brought the baby with her and nursed him along with her own baby Henry. So Molly wasn't so much abandoning Lucas as she was absorbing Zack and the baby into her family.