In the anxious days that followed the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861, Illinois Governor Richard Yates worried in particular about a disease-ridden little town jutting into the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Flood-prone Cairo (pronounced “Kay-row”), located at the far southern end of Illinois in a region of the state nicknamed “Egypt,” didn’t amount to much. After a visit in 1842, famed author Charles Dickens called it a “destestable morass,” a “breeding-place of fever, ague, and
death.” A mere 242 hardy souls called Cairo home at the beginning of 1850. The arrival of the Illinois Central Railroad in 1856, connecting Cairo to Springfield and Chicago, improved the little town’s prospects, but it was still a flyspeck compared to the prominent nearby river cities of Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis. The 1860 Census listed Cairo’s population at 2,188 (2,141 White residents, 47 African American).
Cairo’s days as a sleepy, stunted port city ended the moment Confederate cannons opened fire in Charleston Harbor. War meant that the little community flanked by the Ohio and Mississippi suddenly assumed enormous strategic importance. Not wanting Cairo to fall into Rebel hands, the Kentucky-born Yates, an ardent Unionist and friend of President Abraham Lincoln, looked to the other end of the state for help.
On April 19, the Illinois governor ordered Brig. Gen. R.K. Swift, commander of a Chicago militia brigade, to “have as strong a force as you can” ready to deploy “at a moment’s warning.” A messenger who arrived the next day from Yates in Springfield stressed that its destination “must be kept a profound secret,” Augustus Harris Burley, chairman of a pro-Union Chicago citizens committee, wrote in 1890.
Six hundred ill-armed volunteers equipped with squirrel guns, antique pistols, and muskets obtained from a Milwaukee armory boarded a train at the Illinois Central terminal in Chicago on April 21. At 11 p.m., amid cheers and the sound of screeching steam whistles, the train departed with the well-wishers waving goodbye and its mission a mystery to the troops
