page_title: Southern Illinois
section_title: Origin of "Little Egypt" name
hierarchical_section_title: Southern Illinois / History / Origin of "Little Egypt" name
caption_attribution_description: English: map of the Little Egypt region of Illinois
context_page_description: Southern Illinois is the southern third of the state of Illinois. The southern part of Illinois has a unique cultural and regional history. Part of downstate Illinois, the Southern Illinois region is bordered by the two most voluminous rivers in the United States: the Mississippi River below its connecting Missouri River to the west, and the Ohio River to the east and south with the Wabash as tributary.
  Southern Illinois' most populated city is Belleville at 44,478. Other principal cities include Alton, Centralia, Collinsville, Edwardsville, Effingham, Godfrey, O'Fallon, Harrisburg, Herrin, West Frankfort, Mt. Vernon, Marion, and Carbondale, where the main campus of Southern Illinois University is located. Residents may also travel to amenities in St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; Evansville, Indiana; and Paducah, Kentucky. The region is home to Scott Air Force Base, a major military installation.
  The area has a population of 1.2 million people, who live mostly in rural towns and cities separated by extensive farmland and the Shawnee National Forest.
context_section_description: In 1799 Baptist minister John Badgley dubbed the fertile highlands and bottoms near Edwardsville the "Land of Goshen." Early Edwardsville was known as Goshen. This was a biblical reference to Egypt. Geographic features such as the Mississippi and its flood plains were like the fertile Nile valley. The Indian mounds of the area were large at the time and seemed like the pyramids of Egypt. The nickname stuck and was reinforced by other events.
  In the 1830s, 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 dates 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 Metropolis, Thebes, Dongola, Palestine, Lebanon, New Athens, 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, some residents in Little Egypt still owned slaves. Illinois law generally forbade bringing slaves into Illinois, but a special exemption was given to the salt works near Equality. 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.
  The Underground Railroad also operated actively in southern Illinois, flowing nearly equally northward and southward with bounties available for returned slaves appealing to the residents there. Slaves were going to "Canaan", the land of milk and honey, for which at first glance Little Egypt would be an easy mistake. Directions to Underground Railroad travelers were coded in Bible verses or songs, and the story of Moses fleeing Egypt was certainly used as an analog to their own plight. Egypt was the land to escape, and central Illinois represented the biblical Canaan, with Egypt being a treacherous southern Illinois.
  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 home states. They supported the continuation of slavery and 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."
  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?" w
caption: Southern Illinois is also known as "Little Egypt".
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