I agree wholeheartedly that Jim is the moral center of the book.  But as a
father of two small children who are owned by another man and as a husband
who cannot see his own wife, can Jim afford to allow his sense of morality,
of what is right and wrong, of what is selfish and what is selfless really
revolve solely around Huck?

He cares about Huck more than anyone else on the planet, and what's more,
Jim knows how alone Huck really feels (for he seems to be the only one
besides the reader in whom Huck confides)--but his own children are property
he'd love to liberate.  And the threat of his sale South makes this
imperative ever more urgent.

But a Huck without fear of pap wouldn't liberate Jim at this point in the
novel, let alone two kids and a woman he's never met.  It is, after all, by
everything Huck knows, a sin.

Sharon