How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.[Part].Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Lucas was not only the oldest person living on the place, older even than Edmonds's father would have been, there was that quarter strain not only of white blood and not even Edmonds blood, but of old Carothers McCaslin himself, from whom Lucas was descended not only by a male line but in only two generations, while Edmonds was descended by a female line and five generations back... (2.3.1.27)
The narrator will not tire of telling us how inferior it is to be descended from the female line, and how the bloodline gets diluted over the generations. Everyone seems to believe that special manly traits only get transmitted through the father. Well, maybe they were clued in to some Y-chromosome specific genetic traits. So ahead of their time!
Quote #5
There had been three of them once: James, then a sister named Fonsiba, then Lucas, children of Aunt Tomey's Turl, old Carothers McCaslin's son, and Tennie Beauchamp, whom Edmonds's great-uncle Amodeus McCaslin won from a neighbor in a poker game in 1859. Fonsiba married and went to Arkansas to live and never returned, though Lucas continued to hear from her until her death. But James, the eldest, ran away before he became of age and didn't stop until he had crossed the Ohio River and they never heard from or of him again at all--that is, his white kindred ever knew. (2.3.1.28)
The breaking up of families was a legacy of slavery that continued to affect African American families after Abolition. Here, Lucas and his siblings spread out to different corners of the country and lose touch. The narrator tells us that James left to avoid the memory of slavery and the whims of his white relatives, who at times refused to acknowledge him. Like many free blacks, James headed to the North because of the highly charged racial atmosphere in the South.