'South' Illinois shows Rebel sympathies.(TRAVEL)(THE CIVIL WAR)

Byline: John Lockwood, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Civil War maps can sometimes be misleading.

A typical map will usually show the Confederate states solid gray, and the Union states all blue. In reality, there were pockets of Northern sentiment even in the Deep South, and secessionist groups in the North. One of the larger secessionist movements flared into view in southern Illinois, a free state.

The "South" of Illinois was centered around the strategic town of Cairo (pronounced there as Cay-roe), along the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

The area was often nicknamed Egypt. It had always been more pro-Southern, as well as poorer, than the rest of the state. In 1842, Charles Dickens glimpsed it during his first visit to the United States, and he so loathed the place that he satirized it in "Martin Chuzzlewit," under the name of Eden:

"At last they stopped. At Eden too. The waters of the Deluge might have left it but a week before: so choked with slime and matted growth was the hideous swamp which bore that name."

At any rate, the Illinois secessionists did not let the grass grow under their …