In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Huck and Jim make downriver to Cairo in an effort to get Jim to freedom. However, was Illinois not a non-slave state? Could they not have just crossed the Mississippi to freedom, thereby denying the world a great read?
I always thought it was ignorance, that they heard so much about Cairo in readings and storytellings. It played on the ignorance of the slave and child. Oh, and it also made for better reading.
They couldn’t go to Illinois because Jim was suspected of murdering Huck, which Huck learns when he disguises himself as a girl and visits an Illinois town across the river from the island he and Jim are living on.
And Cairo was not their final stopping place. It is where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi.
Damn, I forgot to add this part. Thanks, Mr. Rosewater!
IIRC, they were going to go up the Ohio River (probably to Ohio), a free-state that was far enough away from the murder accusation. However, they missed the connection.
Thanks all. It has been so long since I read the book last I had forgotten about the murder charge bit. All makes sense now.
I read an article explaining this once. One reason mentioned was that the area around the river border between Missouri and Illinois was too obvious a destination for a runaway slave; it was filled with bounty hunters who would regularly stop any black person in the area - it would have been impossible for Huck and Jim to fake their way past these suspicious slave catchers. So they planned on headed down to Cairo and up the Ohio River where there were fewer runaways and subsequently fewer people looking for runaways.
Little Nemo’s explanation is the same one I got in college. A runaway slace crossing the river would have been walking into a trap.
A Trap!
But the Ohio river was also a boundary between Free and Slave states.
And…
There were slaves in Illinois up until the Civill War. Cite.
I think “being wanted for murder” was the bigger issue.
Your cite says that the Illinois Supreme Court declared in 1843 that a slave who entered or resided in a free territory or state was entitled to freedom.
Slaves didn’t become free merely by touching the soil of a free state. Runaway slaves were fugitives, and the United States Constitution required that free states return fugitives to slave states on demand. The United States Congress passed legislation implementing this requirement in 1791 and strengthened it in 1850.
Under these Fugitive Slave Laws, black people could be captured by bounty hunters and hauled into court to determine their status. If the court found the person to be a fugitive (which they often did, since the procedural deck was stacked against the alleged “slave”), the bounty hunter could return the person to a slave state for sale or for a reward. That’s why the Undergound Railroad carried slaves to Canada, which was the only place they could be entirely secure from capture and return.
To be sure, some escaped slaves did remain in the North and blend into free society; Frederick Douglass was one. But the risk of recapture was omnipresent; even freeborn African Americans were at risk of kidnapping and enslavement.
The risk was greater in some places than others; as Little Nemo says, areas close to the border crossings were especially high risk; northern Ohio would have been somewhat less so; and New England was generally (but not always) safe. In more remote areas, farther from the South, local opposition made it more difficult for bounty hunters to operate, and courts were less sympathetic to bogus claims of enslavement.
Only if they were escaped fugitives, or persons briefly held in transit by visiting Southerners.
I have nothing substantial to add to this. Just wanted to say that the very fact that this discussion is taking place is what makes this board great, at least in my universe.
I’m with you, Godfrey. May I add, FWIW, that Cairo, Ill. was (and maybe still is) pronounced KAY-ro.
And, as a proud Buckeye Stater, I’m glad to see Ohio gettings props as a free state.
If the historical basis for Uncle Tom’s Cabin is correct, if you wanted to flee slavery, or help someone else do so, the usual idea was to get into Ohio; then you had only to cross that state northwards and then board a boat bound for Canada. If I’m not mistaken that would have been the fastest overland route through a free state and out of the country.
Having recently visited Cairo Ill. (yes that was largely what prompted the OP) I can confirm that pronunciation. Also FWIW and IMHO there is very little in Cairo worth seeing.