Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It's Not) From How to Read Literature Like a Professor
The British men in the business of colonizing the North American continent were so sure they "owned whatsoever land they state on" (yes, that's from Pocahontas), they established new colonies past simply drawing lines on a map.
So, anybody living in the at present-claimed territory, became a part of an English language colony.
And of all the lines drawn on maps in the 18th century, perhaps the well-nigh famous is the Bricklayer-Dixon Line.
What is the Mason-Dixon Line?
The Mason-Dixon Line besides called the Mason and Dixon Line is a boundary line that makes up the border between Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Over time, the line was extended to the Ohio River to make upwards the entire southern border of Pennsylvania.
But it also took on additional significance when it became the unofficial border between the North and the South, and perhaps more importantly, between states where slavery was immune and states where slavery had been abolished.
READ More: The History of Slavery: America'south Black Marker
Where is the Bricklayer-Dixon Line?
For the cartographers in the room, the Bricklayer and Dixon Line is an eastward-westward line located at 39ยบ43'twenty" Due north starting due south of Philadelphia and east of the Delaware River. Mason and Dixon resurveyed the Delaware tangent line and the Newcastle arc and in 1765 began running the east-west line from the tangent point, at approximately 39°43′ N.
For the rest of us, it's the edge between Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Pennsylvania–Maryland edge was defined as the line of breadth 15 miles (24 km) south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia.
Mason-Dixon Line Map
Take a wait at the map beneath to see exactly where the Bricklayer Dixon Line is:
Why Is it Called the Mason-Dixon Line?
It is chosen the Mason and Dixon Line because the two men who originally surveyed the line and got the governments of Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland to agree, were named Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon.
Jeremiah was a Quaker and from a mining family unit. He showed a talent early on on for maths then surveying. He went downwardly to London to be taken on by the Royal Social club, just at a fourth dimension when his social life was getting a bit out of paw.
He was a bit of a lad by all accounts, not your typical Quaker, and never married. He enjoyed socialising and carousing and was really expelled from the Quakers for his drinking and keeping loose company.
Stonemason's early life was more sedate by comparison. At the age of 28 he was taken on by the Majestic Observatory in Greenwich as an banana. Noted every bit a "meticulous observer of nature and geography" he later became a fellow of the Regal Order.
Mason and Dixon arrived in Philadelphia on 15 Nov 1763. Although the state of war in America had concluded some two years earlier, at that place remained considerable tension between the settlers and their native neighbours.
The line was not called the Mason-Dixon Line when it was get-go drawn. Instead, it got this name during the Missouri Compromise, which was agreed to in 1820.
Information technology was used to reference the boundary between states where slavery was legal and states where information technology was not. After this, both the name and its understood meaning became more than widespread, and it eventually became office of the edge between the seceded Confederate States of America and Union Territories.
Why Do We Have a Mason-Dixon Line?
In the early days of British colonialism in North America, land was granted to individuals or corporations via charters, which were given by the king himself.
However, even kings tin make mistakes, and when Charles 2 granted William Penn a charter for land in America, he gave him territory that he had already granted to both Maryland and Delaware! What an idiot!?
William Penn was a writer, early member of the Religious Social club of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the English North American colony the Province of Pennsylvania. He was an early on advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his skilful relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans.
Under his direction, the city of Philadelphia was planned and developed. Philadelphia was planned out to be filigree-like with its streets and be very piece of cake to navigate, different London where Penn was from. The streets are named with numbers and tree names. He chose to utilise the names of trees for the cantankerous streets because Pennsylvania means "Penn'southward Woods".
But in his defense, the map he was using was inaccurate, and this threw everything out of whack. At first, it wasn't a huge result since the population in the area was and then sparse there were not many disputes related to the border.
But every bit all the colonies grew in population and sought to aggrandize w, the affair of the unresolved border became a much more prominent in mid-Atlantic politics.
The Feud
In colonial times, every bit in modern times, too, borders and boundaries were disquisitional. Provincial governors needed them to ensure they were collecting their due taxes, and citizens needed to know which country they had a right to claim and which belonged to someone else (of grade, they didn't seem to mind too much when that 'someone else' was a tribe of Native Americans).
The dispute had its origins almost a century before in the somewhat confusing proprietary grants by King Charles I to Lord Baltimore (Maryland) and past King Charles II to William Penn (Pennsylvania and Delaware). Lord Baltimore was an English nobleman who was the first Proprietor of the Province of Maryland, ninth Proprietary Governor of the Colony of Newfoundland and second of the colony of Province of Avalon to its southeast. His title was "Kickoff Lord Proprietary, Earl Palatine of the Provinces of Maryland and Avalon in America".
A problem arose when Charles 2 granted a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681. The grant defined Pennsylvania's southern edge as identical to Maryland'due south northern edge, but described it differently, as Charles relied on an inaccurate map. The terms of the grant clearly bespeak that Charles II and William Penn believed the 40th parallel would intersect the Twelve-Mile Circumvolve around New Castle, Delaware, when in fact it falls due north of the original boundaries of the City of Philadelphia, the site of which Penn had already selected for his colony's capital urban center. Negotiations ensued later the trouble was discovered in 1681.
As a result, solving this border dispute became a major issue, and information technology became an fifty-fifty bigger deal when violent conflict broke out in the mid-1730s over land claimed by both people from Pennsylvania and Maryland. This little upshot became known as Cresap's War.
To stop this madness, the Penns, who controlled Pennsylvania, and the Calverts, who were in charge of Maryland, hired Charles Bricklayer and Jeremiah Dixon to survey the territory and draw a boundary line to which everyone could agree.
But Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon only did this considering the Maryland governor had agreed to a edge with Delaware. He afterward argued the terms he signed to were not the ones he had agreed to in person, only the courts made him stick to what was on paper. Always read the fine impress!
This understanding fabricated information technology easier to settle the dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland considering they could use the now established boundary between Maryland and Delaware as a reference. All they had to do was extend a line west from the southern boundary of Philadelphia, and…
The Mason-Dixon Line was built-in.
Limestone markers measuring upwards to 5ft (1.5m) high – quarried and transported from England – were placed at every mile and marked with a P for Pennsylvania and K for Maryland on each side. So-chosen Crown stones were positioned every five miles and engraved with the Penn family's coat of arms on ane side and the Calvert family's on the other.
Later, in 1779, Pennsylvania and Virginia agreed to extend the Bricklayer-Dixon Line w by five degrees of longitude to create the border betwixt the two colines-turned-states (By 1779, the American Revolution was underway and the colonies were no longer colonies).
In 1784, surveyors David Rittenhouse and Andrew Ellicott and their crew completed the survey of the Mason–Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, five degrees from the Delaware River.
Rittenhouse's crew completed the survey of the Mason–Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, five degrees from the Delaware River. Other surveyors continued w to the Ohio River. The department of the line between the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and the river is the canton line betwixt Marshall and Wetzel counties, W Virginia.
In 1863, during the American Ceremonious War, W Virginia separated from Virginia and rejoined the Union, but the line remained as the edge with Pennsylvania.
It'southward updated several times throughout history, the most recent beingness during the Kennedy Administration, in 1963.
The Mason-Dixon Line's Place in History
The Stonemason–Dixon line along the southern Pennsylvania border later became informally known as the boundary betwixt the free (Northern) states and the slave (Southern) states.
It is unlikely that Mason and Dixon ever heard the phrase "Stonemason–Dixon line". The official report on the survey, issued in 1768, did not fifty-fifty mention their names. While the term was used occasionally in the decades post-obit the survey, information technology came into popular use when the Missouri Compromise of 1820 named "Stonemason and Dixon's line" as function of the boundary between slave territory and complimentary territory.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was United States federal legislation that stopped northern attempts to forever prohibit slavery'southward expansion past admitting Missouri as a slave country in exchange for legislation which prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel except for Missouri. The 16th United States Congress passed the legislation on March three, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March half dozen, 1820.
At first glance, the Mason and Dixon Line doesn't seem similar much more a line on a map. Plus, it was created out of a disharmonize brought on by poor mapping in the first place…a problem more lines aren't likely to solve.
But despite its lowly status as a line on a map, it eventually gained prominence in United States history and collective memory because of what it came to mean to some segments of the American population.
It first took on this significant in 1780 when Pennsylvania abolished slavery. Over time, more northern states would practice the aforementioned until all usa north of the line did non allow slavery. This made information technology the border between slave states and free states.
Perchance the biggest reason this is meaning has to practice with the underground resistance to slavery that took place almost from the establishment's inception. Slaves who managed to escape from their plantations would try to make their way northward, by the Mason-Dixon Line.
However, in the early years of United States history, when slavery was nevertheless legal in some Northern states and fugitive slave laws required anyone who found a slave to return him or her to their owner, meaning Canada was ofttimes the final destination. All the same it was no secret the journey got slightly easier afterward crossing the Line and making it into Pennsylvania.
Because of this, the Mason-Dixon Line became a symbol in the quest for freedom. Making it beyond significantly improved your chances of making it to freedom.
Today, the Mason-Dixon Line does not take the same significance (obviously, since slavery is no longer legal) although it even so serves as a useful demarcation in terms of American politics.
The "South" is however considered to start below the line, and political views and cultures tend to alter dramatically once by the line and into Virginia, Westward Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and so on.
Beyond this, the line notwithstanding serves every bit the border, and anytime ii groups of people tin can agree on a border for a long time, everyone wins. There'south less fighting and more peace.
The Line and Social Attitudes
Because when studying the United States history the most racist stuff e'er comes from the South, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking the North was as progressive as the South was racist.
But this simply isn't true. Instead, people in the North were just as racist, only they went about it in unlike ways. They were more subtle. Sneakier. And they were quick to gauge Southern racist, pushing attending away from them.
In fact, segregation still existed in many northern cities, especially when it came to housing, and attitudes towards blacks were far from warm and welcoming. Boston, a city very much in the North, has had a long history of racism, however Massachusetts was one of the first states to cancel slavery.
As a issue, to say the Mason-Dixon Line separated the country by social attitude is a gross mischaracterization.
formulanone from Huntsville, The states [CC BY-SA 2.0
Information technology'southward true that blacks were generally safer in the Due north than in the South, where lynchings and other mob violence were quite mutual all the mode up until the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
Only the Stonemason-Dixon Line is best understood as the unofficial edge betwixt the North and the S as well every bit the divider betwixt complimentary and slave states.
The Hereafter of the Mason-Dixon Line
Although it still serves as the border of three states, the Bricklayer-Dixon Line is most likely waning in significance. Its unofficial role as a border between the North and Southward merely actually remains because of the political differences between united states of america on each side.
Even so, the political dynamic in the country is changing rapidly, especially as demographics shift. What this will do to the difference between North and South, who knows?
Jbrown620 at English Wikipedia [CC BY-SA iii.0
If we apply history every bit a guide, information technology'due south rubber to say the line will continue to serve some significance if in nothing else except our commonage consciousness. Only maps are redrawn constantly. What'south a timeless border today can exist a forgotten boundary tomorrow. History is still being written.
READ MORE:
The Dandy Compromise of 1787
The Three-Fifths Compromise
vigilquesturnight.blogspot.com
Source: https://historycooperative.org/mason-dixon-line/
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