>
>
> Perhaps there is reasoning that helps place the fictional events that
> early (pre-1850), if so I would like to learn more of it. SLC himself would
> have been 13 in 1848; the events in Adv. of Tom Sawyer take place roughly a
> year before those of Adv, of HF.


Before 1850, fugitive slaves laws - those that Jim stood at risk from --
are said to have been largely ineffective:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts

Jim believes he has to go a long way around IL -- he could have gotten
across the river and been standing in IL in a single day -- to get up the
Ohio river -- Ohio (the state) was considered (relatively speaking) a
hotbed of abolitionist thinking.

Huck and Jim each use the term "abolitionist" but neither is very specific
about it and I don't believe they ever meet any such persons during the
time span of the plot.