Cairo

I obtained my first view of the great Mississippi and of the practical working of lynch law at the same time.

The night of our advent at Cairo was lit up by the fires of an execution.

A Negro, it seems, was the owner or lessee of an old wharf-boat which had been moored to the levee of that town, and which he had turned to the uses of a gambling saloon.

People who had been enticed into it had never been seen or heard of afterward.

The Vigilance Committee then governing Cairo had frequently endeavored to lay hold of the Negro and bring him to trial, but he had secret passages from one part of the wharf-boat to the other by which he always eluded his pursuers.

Having no doubt that he was guilty of several murders, the Vigilantes on the night of our arrival had come down to the levee, two or three hundred strong, armed, equipped, and determined to make the wretch surrender.

In answer to their summons they received nothing but insults from the Negro, still out of sight and secure in one of his hiding-places.

Book two, Three Years as a Negro Minstrel.

Before his experiment was barely started, however, the problem of the fugitives had assumed such proportions that it was taken from the hands of the overburdened Treasury Department and given to the army officials.

Already centers of massed freedmen were forming at Fortress Monroe, Washington, New Orleans, Vicksburg and Corinth, Columbus, Kentucky, and Cairo, Illinois, as well as at Port Royal.

Army chaplains found here new and fruitful fields.

Superintendents of contrabands multiplied, and some attempt at systematic work was made by enlisting the able-bodied men and giving work to the others.

Oh, yeah.

And the reason that, like, you have Cairo, Illinois, and Memphis, Tennessee, and all these places, they had envisioned the Delta as this sort of renewed...

Egyptology.

Or sick fucks.

Yeah.

Cairo, Illinois.

Yes.

That's how you say it.

Not Cairo.

Cairo, Illinois and Paris, Illinois and Paris, Texas.

Yep.

How about, isn't there? Athens, Georgia.

That's at Minneapolis is where your locks and dams start.

And so then the upper river will go from Minneapolis to Cairo, Illinois.

The locks and dams stop roughly at St. Louis.

But the Army Corps of Engineers, the way they count the mile markers or the way they designate the mile markers, it starts at zero at Cairo and goes up.

So the miles at Lake Itasca starts out, I believe, at 1341 or 1341.5, something like that.

And then you count down the miles until you get to Cairo and you get a zero.

And then on the lower river from Cairo all the way out to the Gulf of Mexico, the mile markers again start like 953, something like that.

And they count down all the way out to the Gulf of Mexico or to mile zeros, just a few miles shy of the Gulf of Mexico.

Willie King is actually Billy Gales, a cat originally from Missouri.

He made a name for himself playing drums behind Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker in Cairo, Illinois.

He then joined up with saxophonist Raymond Hill in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Before he knew it, Billy Gales was in the Kings of Rhythm.

In the 7th Congressional District of Indiana, 7,000 Negro votes held the balance of power in the last election.

In Cairo, Illinois, there was a fierce campaign over the present Sheriff Nellis who on the evening of February 17 of the present year repulsed with the aid of Negro deputies an assault upon the county jail in Cairo.

the mob had gathered in the saloons on the levee and inflamed with liquor marched upon the jail with the purpose of taking from the sheriff's custody and stringing up to a convenient post a negro purse snatcher john pratt who had been arrested the day before one of the mob was killed nellis was defeated the fairmont west virginia times says stick to the negro till after the election then organize a white republican party if you want to is the injunction said to have emanated from the white house yesterday when john g capers former commissioner of internal revenue was summoned there for a conversation with the president capers has since formed a lily white republican party in south carolina in ohio secretary of state thompson after telephone conversation with clerk adolph haas granted the cuyahoga county board of elections a hearing on the question as to whether registration officers may ask a man whether he is white or colored one candidate for office in oklahoma made enemies by declaring that the best blood of the white south ran in the veins of ninety per cent of the negroes of the state the Independent Political League carried on a vigorous and widespread campaign among the colored voters in northern and western states.

They had a large number of campaign speakers and organizers at work in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri, and are cooperating with independent Republican and Democratic organizations in Maine, north carolina and tennessee and with similar bodies in the other states mentioned above judicial decisions in the united states circuit court of the district of maryland judge morris made a decision october twenty eighth declaring that the attempt of the annapolis registrars to disfranchise negroes was illegal and that they are liable to damages the decision says among other things that the common sense of the situation would seem to be that the law forbidding the deprivation or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color being the supreme law any state law commanding such deprivation or abridgment is nugatory and not to be obeyed by any one and anyone who does enforce it does so at his known peril, and is made liable to an action for damages by the simple act of enforcing a void law to the injury of the plaintiff in the suit, and no allegations of malice need be alleged or proved." Charles J.

Leaving New York, February 8, 1849, with about eighty men and a capital of twenty-seven thousand dollars, Mr. Audubon proceeded by water to Philadelphia and Baltimore, took the railroad to Cumberland, and thence crossed the Alleghenies by stage to Brownsville and Pittsburgh.

Here the company took a riverboat for Cairo, where they were joined by Colonel Webb.

Changing boats, they descended the Mississippi to New Orleans, which they reached February 18, ten days after leaving New York.

After some time spent here in the purchase of supplies, they took a boat for Brazos at the mouth of the Rio Grande.

Webb's California Company, which was being organized.

I was appointed second in command owing to my knowledge of backwoodsman's life and the experience of my Texas trip.

And after eight weeks of weariness and anxiety, I found I was to take charge of eighty men and, with twenty-seven thousand dollars belonging to the company, was to meet Colonel Webb at Cairo.

I had talked with fathers and with young men who wished to learn all about a backwoodsman's life in half an hour, made purchases of arms and implements and various needful articles, and finally all was ready and the date of departure decided upon.

He lives at 1428 Lombard Street.

the democrats of west virginia had the following plank in their platform of nineteen o eight believing that the extension of the elective franchise to a race inferior in intelligence and without preparation for the wise and prudent exercise of the privilege so vital to the maintenance of good government was a mistake if not a crime committed by the republican party during the reign of passion and prejudice following the civil war for political ends and purposes we declare that the democratic party is in favor of so amending the constitution as to preserve the purity of the ballot and the electorate of the state from the evils resulting from conferring power and privilege upon those who are unfitted to appreciate its importance as it affects the stability and preservation of good government the question is now whether they will seek to carry out the declaration in the seventh congressional district of indiana seven thousand negro votes held the balance of power in the last election in cairo illinois there was a fierce campaign over the present sheriff nellis who on the evening of february seventeenth of the present year repulsed with the aid of negro deputies an assault upon the county jail in cairo the mob had gathered in the saloons on the levee and inflamed with liquor marched upon the jail with the purpose of taking from the sheriff's custody and stringing up to a convenient post a negro purse snatcher john pratt who had been arrested the day before one of the mob was killed nellis was defeated the fairmont west virginia times says stick to the negro till after the election then organize a white republican party if you want to is the injunction said to have emanated from the white house yesterday when john g capers former commissioner of internal revenue was summoned there for a conversation with the president capers has since formed a lily white republican party in south carolina in ohio secretary of state thompson after telephone conversation with clerk adolph haas granted the cuyahoga county board of elections a hearing on the question as to whether registration officers may ask a man whether he is white or colored one candidate for office in oklahoma made enemies by declaring that the best blood of the white south ran in the veins of ninety per cent of the negroes of the state the Independent Political League carried on a vigorous and widespread campaign among the colored voters in northern and western states.

They had a large number of campaign speakers and organizers at work in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri, and are cooperating with independent Republican and Democratic organizations in Maine, north carolina and tennessee and with similar bodies in the other states mentioned above judicial decisions in the united states circuit court of the district of maryland judge morris made a decision october twenty eighth declaring that the attempt of the annapolis registrars to disfranchise negroes was illegal and that they are liable to damages the decision says among other things that the common sense of the situation would seem to be that the law forbidding the deprivation or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color being the supreme law any state law commanding such deprivation or abridgment is nugatory and not to be obeyed by any one and anyone who does enforce it does so at his known peril, and is made liable to an action for damages by the simple act of enforcing a void law to the injury of the plaintiff in the suit, and no allegations of malice need be alleged or proved." Charles J.

Bonaparte was the leading attorney for the plaintiffs, and the case may yet go to the Supreme Court.