Mason-Dixon Line

Mason-Dixon Line, boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland (running between lat. 39°43'26.3"N and lat. 39°43'17.6"N), surveyed by the English team of Charles Mason, a mathematician and astronomer, and Jeremiah Dixon, a mathematician and land surveyor, between 1763 and 1767. The ambiguous description of the boundaries in the Maryland and Pennsylvania charters led to a protracted disagreement between the proprietors of the two colonies, the Penns of Pennsylvania and the Calverts of Maryland. The dispute was submitted to the English court of chancery in 1735. A compromise between two families in 1760 resulted in the appointment of Mason and Dixon. By 1767 the surveyors had run their line 244 mi (393 km) west from the Delaware border, every fifth milestone bearing the Penn and Calvert arms. The survey was completed to the western limit of Maryland in 1773; in 1779 the line was extended to mark the southern boundary of Pennsylvania with Virginia (present-day West Virginia). Before the Civil War the term "Mason-Dixon Line" popularly designated the boundary dividing the slave states from the free states, and it is still used to distinguish the South from the North.

Bibliography

See study by E. Danson (2001).

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Mason-Dixon Line

Originally, the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania. The 233-mi (375-km) line was surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in 1765–68 to define the disputed boundaries between the land grants of the Penns, proprietors of Pennsylvania, and the Baltimores, proprietors of Maryland. The term was first used in congressional debates leading to the Missouri Compromise (1820) to describe the dividing line between the slave states to its south and the free-soil states to its north. It is still used as the figurative dividing line between the North and South.

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Mason-Dixon Line

boundary between Pennsylvania and Mary-land that came to divide the slave (southern) states from the free (northern) states. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 1714]

See : Southern States