Select All Artists Inspired by the Art of Ancient Greece Although Sometimes Differing From It

The British men in the business of colonizing the Northward American continent were so sure they "owned whatever land they land on" (yes, that's from Pocahontas), they established new colonies by simply drawing lines on a map.

So, everyone living in the now-claimed territory, became a part of an English colony.

Map of British territory in North America
A map of the British dominions in North America, c1793.

And of all the lines fatigued on maps in the 18th century, perhaps the well-nigh famous is the Stonemason-Dixon Line.

What is the Mason-Dixon Line?

Stargazer's stone
The "Stargazer's Rock." Charles Bricklayer and Jeremiah Dixon used this as a base of operations signal while plotting the Bricklayer and Dixon line. The name comes from the astronomical observations they made there.

The Bricklayer-Dixon Line likewise called the Stonemason and Dixon Line is a boundary line that makes up the edge betwixt Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Over time, the line was extended to the Ohio River to make upward the entire southern border of Pennsylvania.

But it also took on additional significance when information technology became the unofficial border betwixt the N and the S, and perhaps more importantly, between states where slavery was allowed and states where slavery had been abolished.

READ More: The History of Slavery: America'southward Blackness Mark

Where is the Stonemason-Dixon Line?

For the cartographers in the room, the Mason and Dixon Line is an east-westward line located at 39º43'xx" N starting 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 e-west line from the tangent betoken, at approximately 39°43′ Northward.

For the rest of usa, information technology's the border between Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Pennsylvania–Maryland border was defined every bit the line of breadth fifteen miles (24 km) due south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia.

Mason-Dixon Line Map

Take a look at the map below to see exactly where the Mason Dixon Line is:

Mason-Dixon Line

Why Is it Chosen the Bricklayer-Dixon Line?

It is called the Mason and Dixon Line because the two men who originally surveyed the line and got the governments of Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland to concord, were named Charles Bricklayer and Jeremiah Dixon.

Jeremiah was a Quaker and from a mining family. He showed a talent early on for maths and and so surveying. He went down to London to be taken on by the Royal Society, just at a time when his social life was getting a flake out of hand.

He was a chip of a lad past all accounts, non your typical Quaker, and never married. He enjoyed socialising and carousing and was actually expelled from the Quakers for his drinking and keeping loose company.

Mason'due south early on life was more sedate by comparing. At the age of 28 he was taken on by the Purple Observatory in Greenwich as an assistant. Noted as a "meticulous observer of nature and geography" he afterwards became a boyfriend of the Royal Society.

Stonemason and Dixon arrived in Philadelphia on 15 November 1763. Although the war in America had ended some ii years earlier, there remained considerable tension between the settlers and their native neighbours.

A Plan of the West Line
"A Program of the Westward-Line or Parallel of Breadth" past Charles Bricklayer, 1768.

The line was non called the Bricklayer-Dixon Line when it was get-go drawn. Instead, it got this name during the Missouri Compromise, which was agreed to in 1820.

It was used to reference the boundary between states where slavery was legal and states where it was not. After this, both the name and its understood meaning became more widespread, and it eventually became function of the edge betwixt the seceded Confederate States of America and Union Territories.

Why Do We Have a Stonemason-Dixon Line?

In the early on days of British colonialism in North America, state was granted to individuals or corporations via charters, which were given by the rex himself.

However, even kings can brand mistakes, and when Charles Ii granted William Penn a charter for country 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 Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the English Northward American colony the Province of Pennsylvania. He was an early abet of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his practiced relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans.

Under his direction, the urban center of Philadelphia was planned and developed. Philadelphia was planned out to exist filigree-like with its streets and be very piece of cake to navigate, unlike London where Penn was from. The streets are named with numbers and tree names. He chose to use the names of copse for the cross streets because Pennsylvania means "Penn's Forest".

Charles II of England
Male monarch Charles 2 of England.

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 consequence since the population in the surface area was so sparse at that place were not many disputes related to the border.

But every bit all the colonies grew in population and sought to expand west, the affair of the unresolved border became a much more prominent in mid-Atlantic politics.

The Feud

In colonial times, as in modern times, too, borders and boundaries were critical. Provincial governors needed them to ensure they were collecting their due taxes, and citizens needed to know which land they had a right to claim and which belonged to someone else (of course, 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 "First Lord Proprietary, Earl Palatine of the Provinces of Maryland and Avalon in America".

A problem arose when Charles Two granted a lease for Pennsylvania in 1681. The grant defined Pennsylvania's southern border as identical to Maryland's northern edge, simply described it differently, as Charles relied on an inaccurate map. The terms of the grant conspicuously point that Charles Ii and William Penn believed the 40th parallel would intersect the Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle, Delaware, when in fact information technology falls north of the original boundaries of the City of Philadelphia, the site of which Penn had already selected for his colony's capital metropolis. Negotiations ensued afterwards the problem was discovered in 1681.

Every bit a outcome, solving this border dispute became a major effect, and information technology became an even bigger deal when tearing disharmonize broke out in the mid-1730s over state claimed by both people from Pennsylvania and Maryland. This little effect became known equally Cresap'due south War.

Cresaps War
Map showing the area disputed between Maryland and Pennsylvania during 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 purlieus line to which everyone could hold.

Merely Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon only did this because the Maryland governor had agreed to a border with Delaware. He later argued the terms he signed to were non the ones he had agreed to in person, but the courts made him stick to what was on paper. E'er read the fine impress!

This agreement fabricated it easier to settle the dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland because they could use the now established boundary between Maryland and Delaware every bit a reference. All they had to do was extend a line w from the southern purlieus of Philadelphia, and…

The Bricklayer-Dixon Line was born.

Limestone markers measuring up to 5ft (i.5m) high – quarried and transported from England – were placed at every mile and marked with a P for Pennsylvania and Chiliad for Maryland on each side. So-chosen Crown stones were positioned every five miles and engraved with the Penn family's glaze of arms on one side and the Calvert family unit'due south on the other.

Later, in 1779, Pennsylvania and Virginia agreed to extend the Mason-Dixon Line west by five degrees of longitude to create the edge between the two colines-turned-states (Past 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 Stonemason–Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, 5 degrees from the Delaware River.

Rittenhouse's crew completed the survey of the Bricklayer–Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, five degrees from the Delaware River. Other surveyors continued west to the Ohio River. The section of the line between the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and the river is the county line between Marshall and Wetzel counties, West Virginia.

In 1863, during the American Civil War, Due west Virginia separated from Virginia and rejoined the Wedlock, but the line remained as the border with Pennsylvania.

It'due south updated several times throughout history, the most recent being during the Kennedy Administration, in 1963.

The Mason-Dixon Line's Place in History

The Stonemason–Dixon line forth the southern Pennsylvania border afterward became informally known equally the boundary between the free (Northern) states and the slave (Southern) states.

It is unlikely that Bricklayer and Dixon e'er heard the phrase "Mason–Dixon line". The official report on the survey, issued in 1768, did not even mention their names. While the term was used occasionally in the decades following the survey, it came into popular use when the Missouri Compromise of 1820 named "Mason and Dixon's line" as part of the purlieus betwixt slave territory and free territory.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was United States federal legislation that stopped northern attempts to forever prohibit slavery'due south expansion past albeit Missouri as a slave country in exchange for legislation which prohibited slavery north of the 36°xxx′ parallel except for Missouri. The 16th U.s.a. Congress passed the legislation on March 3, 1820, and President James Monroe signed information technology on March half dozen, 1820.

At first glance, the Mason and Dixon Line doesn't seem similar much more than a line on a map. Plus, it was created out of a conflict brought on by poor mapping in the beginning place…a problem more than lines aren't likely to solve.

But despite its lowly status as a line on a map, it eventually gained prominence in U.s.a. history and collective memory because of what it came to mean to some segments of the American population.

It first took on this meaning in 1780 when Pennsylvania abolished slavery. Over fourth dimension, more northern states would do the same until all us north of the line did not allow slavery. This made it the border betwixt slave states and free states.

Perhaps the biggest reason this is significant has to exercise with the underground resistance to slavery that took place most from the institution's inception. Slaves who managed to escape from their plantations would attempt to make their style north, past the Mason-Dixon Line.

Underground Railroad map
Map of the Underground Railroad. The Mason-Dixon line drew a literal barrier between slave and gratuitous states.

However, in the early years of Usa history, when slavery was yet legal in some Northern states and fugitive slave laws required anyone who constitute a slave to return him or her to their owner, significant Canada was often the final destination. Even so information technology was no hugger-mugger the journeying got slightly easier afterwards crossing the Line and making it into Pennsylvania.

Considering of this, the Stonemason-Dixon Line became a symbol in the quest for freedom. Making information technology across significantly improved your chances of making it to liberty.

Today, the Mason-Dixon Line does not have the same significance (obviously, since slavery is no longer legal) although it still serves as a useful demarcation in terms of American politics.

The "South" is still considered to kickoff beneath the line, and political views and cultures tend to modify dramatically once by the line and into Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, N Carolina, and so on.

Beyond this, the line still serves as the border, and someday two groups of people 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 U.s.a. history the well-nigh racist stuff e'er comes from the South, it's like shooting fish in a barrel to fall into the trap of thinking the North was equally progressive as the South was racist.

Only this but isn't true. Instead, people in the North were merely equally racist, but they went well-nigh it in different ways. They were more subtle. Sneakier. And they were quick to judge Southern racist, pushing attention abroad from them.

In fact, segregation notwithstanding existed in many northern cities, particularly when it came to housing, and attitudes towards blacks were far from warm and welcoming. Boston, a urban center very much in the North, has had a long history of racism, still Massachusetts was one of the first states to abolish slavery.

As a result, to say the Mason-Dixon Line separated the country by social mental attitude is a gross mischaracterization.

Mason-Dixon Crownstone Sign
Mason-Dixon Crownstone sign in Marydel, Maryland.

formulanone from Huntsville, United States [CC Past-SA 2.0

It's true that blacks were generally safer in the Due north than in the S, where lynchings and other mob violence were quite common all the way up until the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

But the Stonemason-Dixon Line is best understood as the unofficial edge betwixt the Northward and the South as well equally the divider between complimentary and slave states.

The Time to come of the Mason-Dixon Line

Although information technology however serves every bit the border of three states, the Mason-Dixon Line is most probable waning in significance. Its unofficial role equally a edge between the Due north and South only really remains because of the political differences between the states on each side.

Even so, the political dynamic in the country is changing chop-chop, especially equally demographics shift. What this will do to the difference between North and South, who knows?

Mason Dixon Line Trail
The "Mason Dixon Line Trail" stretches from Pennsylvania to Delaware, and is a popular attraction to tourists.

Jbrown620 at English language Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0

If we use history as a guide, it's prophylactic to say the line will continue to serve some significance if in nothing else except our collective consciousness. But maps are redrawn constantly. What's a timeless border today can exist a forgotten boundary tomorrow. History is still being written.

READ MORE:

The Great Compromise of 1787

The Three-Fifths Compromise

williamssligized.blogspot.com

Source: https://historycooperative.org/mason-dixon-line/

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