We’ll Swap You Southern Illinois for St. Louis

Hardin County lies alongside the Ohio River, 325 miles straight down Illinois Freeway 1 from Chicago. It’s the least populous county within the state, but in addition some of the historic and picturesque, for in Hardin County is Cave-in-Rock State Park, a distinct segment within the bluff overlooking the river. The 18th Century charlatan Samuel Mason put up an indication promoting Cave-in-Rock as a “Liquor Vault and Home of Leisure.” When thirsty, sexy flatboat crews stopped to be liquored and entertained, Mason robbed them. Cave-in-Rock remained a hideout for “scoundrels, thieves and counterfeiters” till they had been routed by Davy Crockett and Mike Fink. You’d know that when you noticed the Disney film Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, which was filmed in Cave-in-Rock.

Hardin County has made marvelous contributions to the folklore of Illinois, however it now not desires to be a part of this state. Final November, its 3,650 residents voted to “collaborate in discussions with the remaining 101 counties within the state of Illinois, excluding Prepare dinner County, concerning the potential for forming a brand new state and in the end looking for admission to the federal union, because the 51st state.” The non-binding decision handed by a 3-1 margin, making Hardin the twenty seventh county to vote to discover secession — nearly all of them in Southern Illinois.

Chicago and Southern Illinois have not often agreed on something. That goes again to the nineteenth Century, when Chicago voted for Lincoln and Southern Illinois for Douglas. Little Egypt was settled first, and its main lights had been so satisfied that the brand new settlement on Lake Michigan would by no means quantity to something that in 1825, the Financial institution of Shawneetown refused it a $10,000 mortgage. However, based on the guide The Different Illinois, by Baker Brownell, “Chicago beat out Saint Louis and Alton and New Orleans as the massive market and railroad middle. This deflected site visitors and enterprise and grabbed trade. Chicago shouldered us out of the sunshine. To hell with Chicago.”

At this time, Illinois’s authorities is dominated by Chicago-area Democrats who move legal guidelines that go towards the grain of rural Egyptians. Non secular fundamentalism has all the time been an necessary characteristic of life in Southern Illinois, however Carbondale is about to develop into the abortion vacation spot for the complete mid-South, as a result of these danged libruls from Chicago handed the Reproductive Well being Act.

“Our state authorities skews a lot within the course of our largest city space that insurance policies are handed which might be good for Chicago, however not the remainder of the state,” mentioned G.H. Merritt, chair of the pro-secession group New Illinois. “When the state doubled the gasoline tax, for instance, that affected individuals outstate greater than individuals in city areas who take public transportation.”

Given these grievances, possibly it’s time to take the “Illinois” out of Southern Illinois. We are able to’t allow them to kind a 51st state, although, as a result of that new state would elect two conservative Republican senators, altering the stability of energy in Washington. Right here’s a greater thought: let’s commerce Southern Illinois to Missouri — for St. Louis. That will make people on either side of the Mississippi River happier. Southern Illinoisans would go from a Blue state the place it’s straightforward to get an abortion however onerous to get a gun, to a Crimson state the place it’s onerous to get an abortion however straightforward to get a gun. 

St. Louis, alternatively, is a Blue metropolis trapped in a Crimson state. In 2020, St. Louis gave 81 % of its vote to Joe Biden, just one level decrease than Chicago. After the Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade, rural Missouri legislators proposed making it against the law to cross the river to Illinois for an abortion. Politically, culturally, and even linguistically, St. Louis has extra in widespread with Chicago than it does with the remainder of its personal state, which it considers a benighted hillbilly backwater. As a result of the 2 cities are joined by Interstate 55, the normal St. Louis accent has been supplanted by a Chicago-influenced Nice Lakes accent. (Simply hearken to St. Louis native John Goodman play northern Illinois dad Dan Conner on The Conners.)

“St. Louis is the one metropolis outdoors the Nice Lakes that participates within the Northern Cities Vowel Shift,” says Randy Vines, who research the St. Louis language as proprietor of StL Type, a boutique that sells T-shirts with such native sayings as “Freeway Midland Farty” and “The place’d You Go to Excessive Faculty?”

Says Vines, “St. Louis has extra in widespread with the northern and jap cities than the remainder of Missouri. You go 35 miles out, and there’s a serious distinction.”

Again in 2011, St. Louis Publish-Dispatch columnist Invoice McClellan (a Chicago native and Fenger Excessive Faculty graduate), proposed becoming a member of Illinois and renaming town West East St. Louis.

“Let’s break up and get on with our lives,” McClellan wrote. “Many people in West East St. Louis have seen sufficient of this legislative session to know we would like out. The legislators in Jefferson Metropolis need to repeal little one labor legal guidelines, carry the restrictions on pet mills, cast off the voter-approved price of dwelling will increase to the minimal wage and kill unions. Oh yeah, slap lecturers round, too…It’s actually only a matter of dividing the belongings. We’ll take city avenue crime. They will have the meth labs.”

We have already got loads of city avenue crime in Illinois, so a bit of extra gained’t damage us. And simply consider every part else we’d achieve within the commerce. Sure, we’d lose Cave-in-Rock, however we’d achieve Lacelde’s Touchdown. We’d lose the 198-foot-tall cross outdoors Effingham, however we’d achieve the 630-foot-tall Gateway Arch. We’d lose Shemwell’s Barbecue in Cairo, however we’d achieve Bogart’s Smokehouse in Soulard — a complete new model of barbecue for our state. We must take the Cardinals — however that may triple the variety of World Sequence gained by Illinois baseball groups.

On high of that, the Chicago space can cease supporting a backward area of the state that takes $2.88 in tax cash for each $1 it places in. And the nice conservative people of Southern Illinois can lastly discover out what it’s prefer to belong to a small-government state that skimps on funding for parks, universities, and public works. That’s what they’ve all the time wished, proper?