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Among critical readers of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim's decision not to escape from slavery by merely crossing the Mississippi River to the Illinois shore still provokes active discussion. The original Illinois constitution significantly restricted slavery and when Jim escapes from Miss Watson in the early chapters of Twain's novel and hides on Jackson's Island, he is only a short distance from Illinois and freedom.1 So why does he not simply swim to freedom in Illinois, rather than plan with Huck a risky journey downriver on the Mississippi to Cairo, Illinois, and then up the Ohio River toward the free states of Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania? Writing in 1942, Bernard DeVoto accused Twain of "a lordly disregard of the fact that Jim did not need to get to Cairo or the Ohio River, that he could have reached free soil by simply paddling to the Illinois shore from Jackson's Island."2 A half-century later, Julius Lester, who finds fault with Twain's characterization of Jim, registered a complaint similar to DeVoto's criticism: "It defies logic that Jim did not know Illinois was a free state.... If Jim knew that the Ohio met the Mississippi at Cairo, how could he not have known of the closer proximity of freedom to the east in Illinois?"3
Several critics have tried to explain Jim's decision by noting that even if Jim had reached Illinois, he would not be a free man because he would still be subject to fugitive slave laws in force in that free state and to chase by bounty-hunting slave-catchers on the Illinois shore.4 Thomas Cooley, in a footnote in Chapter 8 of the third edition of the Norton Critical Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, provides the most detailed explanation of Jim's reason for not heading to Illinois. Cooley reasonably suggests that Ohio might be Jim's and Huck's destination because of the success of the Underground Railroad there:
Huck earlier locates Jackson's Island only a quarter of a mile from the Illinois shore. What is to prevent Jim from crossing that short space to free soil? Illinois, and especially southern Illinois, where kidnapping and slave-catching were a thriving business, enforced the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793; thus Jim, without freedom papers, would be subject to arrest and...