Ac Origins Can You Fight War Elephants Again?
The British men in the business of colonizing the Northward American continent were so sure they "owned whatsoever land they state on" (yes, that'southward from Pocahontas), they established new colonies by merely cartoon lines on a map.
Then, anybody living in the now-claimed territory, became a function of an English language colony.
And of all the lines drawn on maps in the 18th century, perhaps the most famous is the Stonemason-Dixon Line.
What is the Stonemason-Dixon Line?
The Mason-Dixon Line also chosen 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 brand up the entire southern border of Pennsylvania.
Simply it too took on additional significance when it became the unofficial edge between the North and the S, and perhaps more than importantly, betwixt states where slavery was immune and states where slavery had been abolished.
READ MORE: The History of Slavery: America'due south Black Mark
Where is the Mason-Dixon Line?
For the cartographers in the room, the Stonemason and Dixon Line is an eastward-west line located at 39ยบ43'xx" N starting due south of Philadelphia and eastward 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 bespeak, at approximately 39°43′ N.
For the residuum of u.s., it'south the border between Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Pennsylvania–Maryland border was defined as the line of breadth fifteen miles (24 km) south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia.
Mason-Dixon Line Map
Have a await at the map below to come across exactly where the Mason Dixon Line is:
Why Is it Called the Mason-Dixon Line?
It is chosen the Bricklayer 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. He showed a talent early on for maths and then surveying. He went downward to London to be taken on by the Royal Society, just at a time when his social life was getting a fleck out of manus.
He was a flake 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.
Mason's early life was more sedate past comparison. At the age of 28 he was taken on by the Majestic Observatory in Greenwich as an assistant. Noted as a "meticulous observer of nature and geography" he subsequently became a swain of the Royal Order.
Mason and Dixon arrived in Philadelphia on fifteen November 1763. Although the war in America had concluded some ii years earlier, there remained considerable tension between the settlers and their native neighbours.
The line was non called the Bricklayer-Dixon Line when information technology was start fatigued. 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 proper noun and its understood pregnant became more than widespread, and it somewhen became part of the border betwixt the seceded Confederate States of America and Union Territories.
Why Do We Take a Mason-Dixon Line?
In the early on days of British colonialism in North America, land was granted to individuals or corporations via charters, which were given by the king himself.
Yet, fifty-fifty kings can brand mistakes, and when Charles Ii granted William Penn a lease 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 Order of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the English language North American colony the Province of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his skillful relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans.
Under his management, the urban center of Philadelphia was planned and developed. Philadelphia was planned out to be grid-like with its streets and be very easy to navigate, unlike London where Penn was from. The streets are named with numbers and tree names. He chose to use the names of trees for the cross streets because Pennsylvania means "Penn's Woods".
But in his defense, the map he was using was inaccurate, and this threw everything out of whack. At commencement, it wasn't a huge upshot since the population in the surface 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 expand west, the matter of the unresolved edge 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 correct to merits 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 earlier in the somewhat disruptive proprietary grants past King Charles I to Lord Baltimore (Maryland) and by King Charles II to William Penn (Pennsylvania and Delaware). Lord Baltimore was an English language nobleman who was the first Proprietor of the Province of Maryland, 9th 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 trouble arose when Charles II granted a lease for Pennsylvania in 1681. The grant defined Pennsylvania's southern border as identical to Maryland's northern edge, but described it differently, every bit Charles relied on an inaccurate map. The terms of the grant clearly indicate that Charles Two and William Penn believed the 40th parallel would intersect the Twelve-Mile Circle effectually New Castle, Delaware, when in fact it falls north of the original boundaries of the City of Philadelphia, the site of which Penn had already selected for his colony'due south capital city. Negotiations ensued after the problem was discovered in 1681.
As a result, solving this border dispute became a major upshot, and it became an even bigger deal when violent conflict broke out in the mid-1730s over country claimed past both people from Pennsylvania and Maryland. This footling event 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 purlieus line to which everyone could concur.
Just Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon only did this because the Maryland governor had agreed to a border with Delaware. He after argued the terms he signed to were not the ones he had agreed to in person, but the courts made him stick to what was on paper. Always read the fine print!
This understanding made it easier to settle the dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland considering they could use the now established purlieus 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 up to 5ft (1.5m) high – quarried and transported from England – were placed at every mile and marked with a P for Pennsylvania and M for Maryland on each side. And then-chosen Crown stones were positioned every 5 miles and engraved with the Penn family unit's coat of arms on ane side and the Calvert family unit's 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 2 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 Bricklayer–Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, five degrees from the Delaware River. Other surveyors continued west to the Ohio River. The department of the line between the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and the river is the county line between Marshall and Wetzel counties, Westward Virginia.
In 1863, during the American Civil War, Westward Virginia separated from Virginia and rejoined the Union, simply the line remained equally the edge with Pennsylvania.
It'south updated several times throughout history, the most recent being during the Kennedy Assistants, in 1963.
The Mason-Dixon Line's Place in History
The Bricklayer–Dixon line forth the southern Pennsylvania edge later became informally known as the boundary between the costless (Northern) states and the slave (Southern) states.
It is unlikely that Bricklayer and Dixon ever heard the phrase "Mason–Dixon line". The official written report on the survey, issued in 1768, did non even mention their names. While the term was used occasionally in the decades post-obit the survey, it came into pop use when the Missouri Compromise of 1820 named "Mason and Dixon's line" as function of the purlieus between slave territory and complimentary territory.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was U.s. federal legislation that stopped northern attempts to forever prohibit slavery's expansion by admitting Missouri as a slave state in substitution for legislation which prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel except for Missouri. The 16th Us Congress passed the legislation on March three, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820.
At offset glance, the Stonemason 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 showtime identify…a problem more lines aren't probable to solve.
But despite its lowly status as a line on a map, information technology somewhen gained prominence in United states of america 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 time, more northern states would do the same until all united states northward of the line did not allow slavery. This made it the border between slave states and gratis states.
Perchance the biggest reason this is significant has to do with the underground resistance to slavery that took place almost from the institution's inception. Slaves who managed to escape from their plantations would try to make their way n, past the Mason-Dixon Line.
Notwithstanding, in the early years of United states history, when slavery was nonetheless legal in some Northern states and avoiding slave laws required anyone who found a slave to return him or her to their owner, significant Canada was often the final destination. Nonetheless it was no surreptitious the journey got slightly easier after crossing the Line and making it into Pennsylvania.
Considering of this, the Mason-Dixon Line became a symbol in the quest for freedom. Making it across significantly improved your chances of making information technology to freedom.
Today, the Mason-Dixon Line does not have the same significance (manifestly, since slavery is no longer legal) although it nevertheless serves every bit a useful demarcation in terms of American politics.
The "S" is still considered to start beneath the line, and political views and cultures tend to change dramatically once past the line and into Virginia, Westward Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and so on.
Beyond this, the line still serves as the border, and someday two groups of people can concord on a edge for a long fourth dimension, anybody wins. At that place's less fighting and more peace.
The Line and Social Attitudes
Considering when studying the Us history the virtually racist stuff always comes from the South, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking the Northward was equally progressive as the S was racist.
Simply this simply isn't true. Instead, people in the North were just as racist, only they went virtually it in unlike means. They were more than subtle. Sneakier. And they were quick to judge Southern racist, pushing attention away from them.
In fact, segregation even so existed in many northern cities, peculiarly 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, all the same Massachusetts was one of the first states to abolish slavery.
As a effect, to say the Mason-Dixon Line separated the country past social mental attitude is a gross mischaracterization.
formulanone from Huntsville, U.s. [CC BY-SA 2.0
It'due south true that blacks were by and large safer in the North than in the South, where lynchings and other mob violence were quite mutual all the style up until the ceremonious rights motility in the 1950s and 1960s.
But the Bricklayer-Dixon Line is best understood every bit the unofficial border betwixt the North and the South equally well every bit the divider between free and slave states.
The Future of the Mason-Dixon Line
Although it still serves as the border of three states, the Bricklayer-Dixon Line is most probable waning in significance. Its unofficial role equally a border between the North and Due south but really remains considering of the political differences between united states on each side.
However, the political dynamic in the land is changing rapidly, especially equally demographics shift. What this volition exercise to the difference betwixt North and South, who knows?
Jbrown620 at English language Wikipedia [CC BY-SA iii.0
If nosotros use history every bit a guide, it's safe 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 be a forgotten boundary tomorrow. History is however existence written.
READ MORE:
The Smashing Compromise of 1787
The 3-Fifths Compromise
jenkinsstogrortered71.blogspot.com
Source: https://historycooperative.org/mason-dixon-line/
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