Mason–Dixon line
The Mason–Dixon line, also called the Mason and Dixon line or Mason's and Dixon's line, is a demarcation line separating four U.S. states, constituting parts of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (part of Virginia until 1863). It was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon as part of the resolution of a border dispute involving Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware in the colonial United States.[1] The dispute had its origins almost a century earlier in the somewhat confusing proprietary grants by King Charles I to Lord Baltimore (Maryland), and by his son King Charles II to William Penn (Pennsylvania and Delaware).
For other uses, see Mason Dixon.The largest portion of the Mason–Dixon line, along the southern Pennsylvania border, later became informally known as the boundary between the Southern slave states and Northern free states. This usage came to prominence during the debate around the Missouri Compromise of 1820, when drawing boundaries between slave and free territory was an issue, and resurfaced during the American Civil War, with border states also coming into play. The Confederate States of America claimed the Virginia portion of the line as part of its northern border, although it never exercised meaningful control that far north – especially after West Virginia separated from Virginia and joined the Union as a separate state in 1863. It is still used today in the figurative sense of a line that separates the Northeast and South culturally, politically, and socially .
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The line was established to end a boundary dispute between the British colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania/Delaware. Maryland had been granted the territory north of the Potomac River up to the 40th parallel. Pennsylvania's grant defined the colony's southern boundary as following a 12-mile (radius) circle (19 km) counter-clockwise from the Delaware River until it hit "the beginning of the fortieth degree of Northern latitude." From there the boundary was to follow the 40th parallel due west for five degrees of longitude. But the 40th parallel does not, in fact, intersect the 12-mile circle, instead lying significantly farther north. Thus Pennsylvania's southern boundary as defined in its charter was contradictory and unclear. The most serious problem was that the Maryland claim would put Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania, in Maryland.[3]
The dispute was peacefully resolved in 1767[10] when the boundary was fixed as follows:
The disputants engaged an expert British team, astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon, to survey what became known as the Mason–Dixon line.[11][12] It cost the Calverts of Maryland and the Penns of Pennsylvania £3,512 9/ – (equivalent to £571,700 in 2023) to have 244 miles (393 km) surveyed with such accuracy. To them the money was well spent, for in a new country there was no other way of establishing ownership.[13][14]
The Mason-Dixon Trail stretches from Pennsylvania to Delaware and is a popular attraction to tourists.
The Mason–Dixon line is made up of four segments corresponding to the terms of the settlement:
The most difficult task was fixing the tangent line, as they had to confirm the accuracy of the transpeninsular line midpoint and the 12-mile circle, determine the tangent point along the circle, and then actually survey and monument the border. They then surveyed the north and arc lines. They did this work between 1763 and 1767. This actually left a small wedge of land in dispute between Delaware and Pennsylvania until 1921.[15]
In April 1765, Mason and Dixon began their survey of the more famous Maryland–Pennsylvania line. They were commissioned to run it for a distance of five degrees of longitude west from the Delaware River, fixing the western boundary of Pennsylvania (see the entry for Yohogania County). However, in October 1767, at Dunkard Creek near Mount Morris, Pennsylvania, nearly 244 miles (393 km) west of the Delaware, their Iroquois guides refused to go any further, having reached the border of their lands with the Lenape, with whom they were engaged in hostilities. As a result, the group was forced to quit, and on October 11, they made their final observations, 233 miles (375 km) from their starting point.[16]
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.[note 1] 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.[19]
As the 20th century moved along and modern roadways came to northeastern Maryland and Delaware, the old boundary line was noted by construction crews, newspaper columnists, and the traveling public. When contractors started working on a section of Route 40, a modern dual highway between Elkton and Glasgow, they discovered a time and weather battered original Mason Dixon Marker. It was relocated to northside of the highway and when the governors of Delaware and Maryland dedicated the highway on June 26, 1941, newspaper reporters took note of the ancient old relic.[20]
Although greatly mangled by traffic in the second half of the twentieth century, it still stands today. But long before bulldozers and other heavy equipment started moving earth for the dual highway before World War II, there were concerns about the preservation of this monument. In 1885, the Cecil Democrat reported that after 119-years, the stone on the road from Elkton to Glasgow had "yielded to the action of the elements and fell over." The editor urged the Cecil County Commissioners, Commissioner of the Land Office, Governor or some public minded citizen to preserve this "old time-honored, moss-covered relic of a generation, which has passed away. . . "[20]
On November 14, 1963, during the bicentennial of the Mason–Dixon line, U.S. President John F. Kennedy opened a newly completed section of Interstate 95 where it crossed the Maryland–Delaware border. After the president, flanked by the governors of Delaware and Maryland, cut a ribbon opening the Interstate, they moved to the grassy median strip where a replica Mason and Dixon Marker had been placed for the bicentennial. There President Kennedy and the governors unveiled a limestone replica.[21] It was one of his last public appearances before his assassination in Dallas, Texas. The Delaware Turnpike and the Maryland portion of the new road were later designated as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway.
The Mason–Dixon line has been resurveyed three times: in 1849, 1900, and in the 1960s.[11]
In 2020, 30 volunteers, at the behest of the Maryland Geological Survey, started a project to locate and document the 226 remaining Mason-Dixon Line stones, which were placed every mile in the 18th century to mark the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland. The stones are historically significant because they represent one of the first geodetic surveys ever conducted in North America. The volunteers hope to get the stones listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which will help to preserve them for future generations. By 2023, the volunteers found 218 of the often-hidden 500-pound limestone stone markers quarried in England.[22]
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In culture[edit]
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Systematic errors and experiments to weigh the Earth[edit]
Mason and Dixon achieved a high level of accuracy in the survey due to the work of Nevil Maskelyne, some of whose instruments they used.[23] There was keen interest in their work and much communication between the surveyors, Maskelyne and other members of the British Scientific establishment in the Royal Society in Britain, notably Henry Cavendish.[24][25][26]
During such survey work, it is normal to survey from point to point along the line and then survey back to the starting point, where if there were no errors the origin and re-surveyed position would coincide.[27] Normally the return errors would be random – i.e. the return survey errors compared to the intermediate points back to the start point would be spatially randomly distributed around the start point.[28] Mason and Dixon found that there were larger than expected systematic errors, i.e. non-random errors, that led the return survey consistently being in one direction away from the starting point.[29]
When this information got back to the Royal Society members, Henry Cavendish realised that this may have been due to the gravitational pull of the Allegheny Mountains deflecting the theodolite plumb-bobs and spirit levels.[24][30][31] Maskelyne then proposed measuring the gravitational force causing this deflection induced by the pull of a nearby mountain upon a plumb-bob in 1772 and sent Mason (who had returned to Britain) on a site survey through central England and Scotland to find a suitable location during the summer of 1773.[32][33][34] Mason selected Schiehallion at which to conduct what became known as the Schiehallion experiment, which was carried out primarily by Maskelyne and determined the density of the Scottish mountain.[23][33][34] Several years later Cavendish used a very sensitive torsion balance to carry out the Cavendish experiment and determine the average density of Earth.[31]
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Name[edit]
It is unlikely that Mason and Dixon ever heard the phrase "Mason–Dixon line". The official report on the survey, issued in 1768, did not even mention their names.[9] While the term was used occasionally in the decades following the survey, it came into popular use during congressional debates on the Missouri Compromise named "Mason and Dixon's line" as part of the boundary between slave territory and free territory.[35]
Symbolism[edit]
In popular usage to people from the United States, the Mason–Dixon line symbolizes a cultural boundary between the North and the South (Dixie). Originally "Mason and Dixon's Line" simply referred to the border between Pennsylvania (including "the Delaware Counties") and Maryland. However, it has been used metaphorically to describe the entire boundary between slave and free states during the 19th-century. After Pennsylvania abolished slavery, it served as a demarcation line for the legality of slavery. Technically, that demarcation did not extend beyond Pennsylvania where Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, all slave states, lay south or east of the boundary. Also lying north and east of the boundary was New Jersey, where slavery was formally abolished in 1846, but former slaves continued to be "apprenticed" to their masters until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.
The Missouri Compromise line (Parallel 36°30′ north) had a much clearer geographic connection to slavery in the United States leading up to the Civil War.[36]
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