HISTORY OF SOUTHERN ILL INCLUDING POPE COUNTY

The County hi lited in red is Pope County.  Far Southern Ill.

 

Pope County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 4,470, which is an increase of 1.3% from 4,413 in 2000.^[1] Its county seat is Golconda.^[2] In terms of population, it is the smallest county in Illinois.
The county was organized in 1816 from portions of Gallatin County and Johnson County and named after Nathaniel Pope, a Secretary of the Illinois Territory

History
First permanent settlement in 1798 at the modern-day site of Golconda, operating as a ferry point across the Ohio River. Pope County was formed in 1816 from portions of Gallatin & Johnson Counties.

Geography
The entire county is hilly and during rainy weather rivulets cascade down the hills in the park forming waterfalls of varying sizes and heights. The county contains Dixon Springs State Park, one of many state parks in the Illinois Shawnee Hills, and is part of the Shawnee National Forest. It is bordered to the south and east by the Ohio River, which marks the state's border with Kentucky.
According to the 2010 census, the county has a total area of 374.30 square miles (969.4 km²), of which 368.77 square miles (955.1 km²) (or 98.52%) is land and 5.53 square miles (14.3 km²) (or 1.48%) is water.^[3]

Notable residents

• James L. Alcorn, born near Golconda, American Civil War general in the Union Army
• John R. Hodge, born in Golconda; Military Governor of South Korea preceding the Korean War and Commanding General of the U.S. Third Army
• Green B. Raum, born in Golconda, American Civil War general in the Union Army

 SOUTHERN ILLINOIS

Southern Illinois (also known as "Little Egypt" or "Egypt") is the southern third of the state of Illinois. With the area code 618, the southern part of Illinois is geographically, culturally, and economically distinct from the rest of the state. The region is surrounded on three of four sides by the most voluminous rivers in the United States: the Wabash and Ohio rivers to the east and south, and the Mississippi River and its connecting Missouri River to the west.
Southern Illinois' most populated city is currently Belleville at 44,478. Other principal cities include Collinsville, Edwardsville, Mt. Vernon, Marion, and Carbondale, where the main campus of Southern Illinois University is located. It also has a campus at Edwardsville. Residents travel to amenities in St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Evansville, Indiana; and Paducah, Kentucky.
The area has a population of 1.2 million people^[1], who live mostly in rural towns and cities separated by extensive farmland and the Shawnee National Forest. The two most dense areas of population are Metro-East, which is the partly industrialized Illinois portion of the St. Louis Metropolitan Area and the Carbondale-Marion-Herrin, Illinois Combined Statistical Area, centered on Carbondale and Marion, a two-county area that is home to 123,272 residents.
The first settlers migrated from the Upland South, traveling by the Ohio River, and the region was affiliated with the southern agricultural economy and rural culture. Some settlers even owned slaves before the territory was organized and it was prohibited. Many areas developed an economy based on coal mining. Except for the counties in the St. Louis MSA, much of Southern Illinois is still culturally affiliated with western Kentucky, southwestern Indiana, and southeast Missouri, and the people speak with similar accents. Southern Illinois, the earliest settled and once the wealthiest part of Illinois, is known for its rich history and the abundance of antebellum architecture remaining in its small towns and cities.
Southern Illinois is slowly gaining a cultural identity apart from its neighbors. Formerly dispersed rural populations have become more centralized around the cities of Carbondale and Belleville.

Arrival of settlers

 

The Bank of Illinois in Shawneetown, built in 1839-1841, shown in 1937

European-American settlers were initially slow to arrive in Illinois after the United States victory in the American Revolutionary War. By 1800 fewer than 2,000 European Americans lived in Illinois. Soon more settlers came from the backwoods areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. These early settlers were mostly of English, German, and Scots-Irish descent.^[2]
In 1787, the federal government included Illinois in the Northwest Territory, an unorganized area that included present-day Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Slavery was prohibited in this area, but for some time, slaveholders already in the area were allowed to keep their chattel property. As the areas became more populated with European Americans, they could be admitted as states to the Union. Illinois became a part of the Indiana Territory in 1800. Illinois settlers wanted more control over their own affairs and Illinois became a separate territory in 1809. It was admitted as a free state in 1818. In late 1811 and early 1812, the New Madrid earthquakes struck the region as one of the largest successions of earthquakes, including the most intensive ever indirectly inferred (not recorded) in the contiguous United States.^[2]
The first bank to be chartered in Illinois was located at Old Shawneetown in 1816. The first building used solely to house a bank in Illinois was built in 1840 in Old Shawneetown and was used until the 1920s. The Old Shawneetown State Bank has been restored as an historical site. Crops of cotton and tobacco were grown in the extreme southern region of Illinois. Cotton was grown mostly for the home weaver, but during the Civil War, cotton was also grown for export, as the regular supply of cotton from the South was not available. Enough tobacco was grown to make it a profitable crop for export. Both crops have been succeeded by other agricultural commodities.^[2]

[edit] 19th century turbulence

Belleville around the start of the 20th century.

A feud between families in Williamson County, called the Bloody Vendetta, lasted nearly ten years and took many lives. In all, 495 assaults with a deadly weapon were committed and 285 murders took place in Williamson County between 1839 and 1876. This was very unusual, as crime was almost non-existent in Illinois during its frontier years prior to this period of lawlessness.^[2]
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln ran for the U.S. Senate against Stephen A. Douglas. A debate was held in seven towns in Illinois, one being near Jonesboro. Many of the people living in Southern Illinois were first or second-generation Southerners. Cairo, Illinois, at the southern tip where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi, was of strategic importance. On either side of the rivers were states which, despite remaining in the Union, had numerous residents who were sympathetic to the South. Some leaders in this area had been active in the Knights of the Golden Circle, which proposed a southern pan-Caribbean confederation based on slave states and nations.
The outbreak of the American Civil War drew from the mixed loyalties in this region, and some residents enlisted in the Confederate Army. In June 1861, 34 men from the Southern Illinois counties of Williamson and Jackson traveled to western Tennessee and became part of Company G of the 15th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, according to "Illinois Rebels - A Civil War Unit History of G Company, 15th Tennessee Regiment Volunteer Infantry" by Ed Gleeson (1996, Guild Press of Indiana, 435 Gradle Drive, Carmel, Indiana 46032). The Union Army also used Cairo as a staging area for its expeditions into the border states of Missouri and Kentucky, and also the Confederate states of Tennessee and Mississippi.

Population among the smaller cities and towns have dropped significantly as people moved to the Carbondale-Herrin-Marion combined statistical area and Metro East.^[7]

Origin of "Little Egypt" name

Southern Illinois is also known as "Little Egypt".

The Johnson County Courthouse Finished in 1871 for $80,000 in Vienna.

The nickname "Egypt" may have arisen in the 1830s, when poor harvests in the north of the state drove people to Southern Illinois to buy grain. Others say it was because the land of the great Mississippi and Ohio River valleys were like that of Egypt’s Nile delta. According to Hubbs, the nickname may date back to 1818, when a huge tract of land was purchased at the confluence of the rivers and its developers named it Cairo (/ˈkɛəroʊ/) Today, the town of Cairo still stands on the peninsula where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi. Other settlements in the area were also given names with Egyptian, Greek or Middle Eastern origins: The Southern Illinois University Salukis sports teams and towns such as Thebes, Dongola, Palestine, Lebanon, New Athens (/njuː ˈeɪθənz/), Sparta, and Karnak show the influence of classical culture. (Greek names were also related to the contemporary national pride in the new republic of the early 19th century, and were given to towns throughout the Midwest.) Egyptian names were concentrated in towns of Little Egypt but also appeared in towns further south. For instance, about 100 miles (200 km) south of Cairo, along the Mississippi, lies Memphis, Tennessee, named after the Egyptian city on the Nile.
Although Illinois was a free state prior to the American Civil War, in Little Egypt some residents still owned slaves. Illinois law generally forbade bringing slaves into Illinois, but a special exemption was given to the salt works near Equality, Illinois. In addition, an exception was made for slaveholders who held long-term indentured servants or descendants of slaves in the area before it achieved statehood.^{[citation needed]}
The nicknames for this region also arose from the political tensions prior to and during the American Civil War, as regions of the state allied differently with North and South. Because southern Illinois was settled by southerners, they maintained a sympathy for many issues of their former states. They supported the continuation of slavery. They voted for Democrats, at a time when the northern part of the state supported Republicans. The meaning is expressed in this description of the 1858 campaign of Douglas and Abraham Lincoln:

"In 1858, debating in northern Illinois, Douglas had threatened Lincoln by asserting that he would 'trot him down to Egypt' and there challenge him to repeat his antislavery views before a hostile crowd. The audience understood Douglas: overwhelming proslavery sentiment and Democratic unanimity in Egypt had led to the nickname."^[8]

In the fall of 1861, Democrats took a majority of seats in the state legislature. They worked to pass provisions of a new constitution, an initiative begun in 1860. They proposed reapportionment so the southern region's less populous counties would have representation equal to those in the north, which was growing more rapidly. Northern Illinois residents worried about the state coming under the political will of the southern minority. "Shall the manufacturing, agricultural and commercial interests of northern Illinois be put into Egyptian bondage?" wondered the Aurora Beacon."^[9] When Lincoln commissioned the Southern Illinois Democrat, John Alexander McClernand, as a brigadier general, he told him him to "keep Egypt right side up".^[10]
In addition, southern Illinois had become the center of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret group devoted to supporting the Confederacy. With concern rising about armed southern sympathizers, in August 1862, U.S. Marshal David Phillips arrested several Democrats who allegedly belonged to the Knights, including men in respectable positions: Congressmen, state representatives, and judges. One was Circuit Judge Andrew Duff. They were sent to Washington, DC, where they were held for 68 days before release, but they were never charged. Democrats won across the state in the fall election.^[8]

Cairo panoramic map, 1885. The city sits between two rivers, reminding early settlers of the Egyptian Delta.

After the war, other reasons were proposed for the nickname. Political divisions continued in the state. In the later 19th century, the central and southern agricultural areas joined the Populist Movement. Chicago and the industrial North aligned with similar areas and continued as predominately Republican into the 20th century.^[9]
In 1871 Judge Andrew Duff wrote an article in which he ignored the war years and preceding political divisions. He claimed the name of Egypt related to Southern Illinois’ role in supplying grain to northern and central Illinois following the "Winter of the Deep Snow" in 1830–31. Following a long winter and late spring, Upper Illinois lost much of its harvest in an early September frost. Southern Illinois's weather gave it good crops, so it could ship grain and corn north. The nickname supposedly arose from similarities of the events to the well-known Bible story of Jacob’s sons going to Egypt for grain to survive a famine.^[11]
Belly dancer Farida Mazar Spyropoulos' appearance as "Little Egypt" at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago brought notoriety to the name, but she had no connection to the Illinois region. Other dancers took up the stage which popularized it further in the early 20th Century.
One of the earliest uses of the phrase "Little Egypt" is found in the Troy Weekly Call of Troy, Illinois, in 1912. A state news brief was headlined, "Two New Little Egypt Pastors." about two new Presbyterian pastors about to be installed at Brookport and Salem, Illinois.^[12] The Chicago Tribune appears to have first used the phrase "Little Egypt" in reference to Southern Illinois on 25 April 1920 in an article about fruit grown in the region.^[13] The title character in the comic strip "Moon Mullins" had a girlfriend named Little Egypt. The strip's creator Frank Willard, was a native of Anna and Southern Illinois