It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Million Dollar Baby Memes
The British men in the business organization of colonizing the North 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.
And then, everyone living in the now-claimed territory, became a part of an English language colony.
And of all the lines drawn on maps in the 18th century, perhaps the most famous is the Mason-Dixon Line.
What is the Stonemason-Dixon Line?
The Bricklayer-Dixon Line also called the Mason and Dixon Line is a boundary line that makes upwardly the border between Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Over time, the line was extended to the Ohio River to make up the entire southern border of Pennsylvania.
But information technology also took on boosted significance when it became the unofficial border between the North and the S, and perhaps more importantly, between states where slavery was allowed and states where slavery had been abolished.
READ More than: The History of Slavery: America'due south Blackness Mark
Where is the Mason-Dixon Line?
For the cartographers in the room, the Stonemason and Dixon Line is an east-w line located at 39ยบ43'twenty" North starting south of Philadelphia and eastward of the Delaware River. Bricklayer 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′ Due north.
For the rest of u.s., it'south the edge between Maryland, W Virginia, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Pennsylvania–Maryland border was defined as the line of latitude fifteen miles (24 km) south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia.
Mason-Dixon Line Map
Accept a expect at the map below to meet exactly where the Bricklayer Dixon Line is:
Why Is it Called the Stonemason-Dixon Line?
It is chosen the Stonemason 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 on for maths and so surveying. He went down to London to be taken on past the Majestic Society, just at a time when his social life was getting a scrap 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 actually expelled from the Quakers for his drinking and keeping loose company.
Stonemason'due south early life was more sedate past comparing. At the age of 28 he was taken on past the Royal Observatory in Greenwich every bit an assistant. Noted equally a "meticulous observer of nature and geography" he after became a fellow of the Majestic Society.
Stonemason and Dixon arrived in Philadelphia on 15 November 1763. Although the war in America had concluded some two years earlier, there remained considerable tension between the settlers and their native neighbours.
The line was not called the Stonemason-Dixon Line when information technology was first drawn. Instead, it got this proper name during the Missouri Compromise, which was agreed to in 1820.
It was used to reference the purlieus betwixt states where slavery was legal and states where information technology was not. After this, both the name and its understood meaning became more widespread, and information technology eventually became function of the border between the seceded Confederate States of America and Union Territories.
Why Practice Nosotros Have a Mason-Dixon Line?
In the early days of British colonialism in Due 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 on member of the Religious Order of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the English North American colony the Province of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans.
Under his direction, the metropolis of Philadelphia was planned and developed. Philadelphia was planned out to be grid-like with its streets and be very like shooting fish in a barrel to navigate, unlike London where Penn was from. The streets are named with numbers and tree names. He chose to utilize the names of trees for the cross streets considering Pennsylvania means "Penn's Woods".
Merely in his defense, the map he was using was inaccurate, and this threw everything out of whack. At outset, it wasn't a huge event since the population in the surface area was and then sparse there were non many disputes related to the border.
But as all the colonies grew in population and sought to expand due west, the matter 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 correct to claim and which belonged to someone else (of course, they didn't seem to listen as well much when that 'someone else' was a tribe of Native Americans).
The dispute had its origins well-nigh a century before in the somewhat confusing proprietary grants past Male monarch Charles I to Lord Baltimore (Maryland) and past King Charles Two 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 Ii granted a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681. The grant defined Pennsylvania's southern edge equally identical to Maryland'south northern border, merely described it differently, as Charles relied on an inaccurate map. The terms of the grant clearly indicate that Charles 2 and William Penn believed the 40th parallel would intersect the Twelve-Mile Circle effectually New Castle, Delaware, when in fact it falls due north of the original boundaries of the Metropolis of Philadelphia, the site of which Penn had already selected for his colony'south capital letter city. Negotiations ensued afterwards the problem was discovered in 1681.
As a consequence, solving this border dispute became a major issue, and information technology became an even bigger bargain when trigger-happy conflict bankrupt out in the mid-1730s over state claimed by both people from Pennsylvania and Maryland. This little event became known equally Cresap's War.
To stop this madness, the Penns, who controlled Pennsylvania, and the Calverts, who were in charge of Maryland, hired Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to survey the territory and depict a purlieus line to which everyone could concord.
But Charles Bricklayer and Jeremiah Dixon only did this because the Maryland governor had agreed to a border with Delaware. He afterward 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. E'er read the fine impress!
This understanding fabricated it easier to settle the dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland considering they could apply the now established boundary between Maryland and Delaware as a reference. All they had to exercise was extend a line westward from the southern purlieus of Philadelphia, and…
The Bricklayer-Dixon Line was born.
Limestone markers measuring upwardly 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. So-called Crown stones were positioned every five miles and engraved with the Penn family'south glaze of arms on one side and the Calvert family'due south on the other.
Subsequently, in 1779, Pennsylvania and Virginia agreed to extend the Mason-Dixon Line west by five degrees of longitude to create the border between 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 coiffure completed the survey of the Mason–Dixon line to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, five degrees from the Delaware River.
Rittenhouse'south crew completed the survey of the Mason–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 canton line between Marshall and Wetzel counties, West Virginia.
In 1863, during the American Civil State of war, West Virginia separated from Virginia and rejoined the Union, but the line remained as the border with Pennsylvania.
It'southward updated several times throughout history, the most recent being during the Kennedy Administration, in 1963.
The Mason-Dixon Line'south Place in History
The Stonemason–Dixon line forth the southern Pennsylvania border after became informally known as the boundary between the free (Northern) states and the slave (Southern) states.
Information technology is unlikely that Mason and Dixon ever heard the phrase "Bricklayer–Dixon line". The official report on the survey, issued in 1768, did non fifty-fifty 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 "Bricklayer and Dixon's line" as part of the boundary between slave territory and free territory.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was United States federal legislation that stopped northern attempts to forever prohibit slavery'south expansion past albeit Missouri as a slave land 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 3, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820.
At first glance, the Bricklayer and Dixon Line doesn't seem similar much more than a line on a map. Plus, information technology was created out of a conflict brought on by poor mapping in the first place…a problem more than lines aren't likely to solve.
But despite its lowly condition as a line on a map, it somewhen gained prominence in United States history and collective retentivity because of what it came to mean to some segments of the American population.
It outset took on this meaning in 1780 when Pennsylvania abolished slavery. Over time, more northern states would practice the same until all usa due north of the line did not permit slavery. This made information technology the border between slave states and free states.
Perhaps the biggest reason this is significant has to exercise 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 brand their fashion north, past the Mason-Dixon Line.
However, in the early years of United States history, when slavery was still legal in some Northern states and fugitive slave laws required anyone who plant a slave to return him or her to their owner, meaning Canada was frequently the concluding destination. Yet information technology was no secret the journeying 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 information technology across significantly improved your chances of making information technology to liberty.
Today, the Mason-Dixon Line does not accept the same significance (obviously, since slavery is no longer legal) although it still serves as a useful demarcation in terms of American politics.
The "Due south" is still considered to get-go below the line, and political views and cultures tend to modify dramatically once past the line and into Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and and so on.
Beyond this, the line still serves as the border, and anytime two groups of people can concur on a border for a long fourth dimension, everyone wins. In that location's less fighting and more peace.
The Line and Social Attitudes
Considering when studying the United States history the most racist stuff always comes from the South, it's easy to autumn into the trap of thinking the Northward was equally progressive every bit the S was racist.
Simply this just isn't true. Instead, people in the Northward were just as racist, but they went about information technology in unlike ways. They were more subtle. Sneakier. And they were quick to approximate Southern racist, pushing attending away from them.
In fact, segregation all the same existed in many northern cities, especially when information technology 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, yet Massachusetts was 1 of the first states to abolish slavery.
Every bit a effect, to say the Mason-Dixon Line separated the land by social attitude is a gross mischaracterization.
formulanone from Huntsville, United States [CC Past-SA 2.0
It's true that blacks were mostly safer in the N than in the South, where lynchings and other mob violence were quite common all the fashion upward until the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
Only the Stonemason-Dixon Line is all-time understood as the unofficial border betwixt the Northward and the Due south besides equally the divider betwixt free and slave states.
The Hereafter of the Mason-Dixon Line
Although information technology nonetheless serves as the border of 3 states, the Mason-Dixon Line is most likely waning in significance. Its unofficial role as a border betwixt the North and S just really remains because of the political differences between united states of america on each side.
However, the political dynamic in the country is changing rapidly, especially every bit demographics shift. What this will practice to the difference between Due north and S, who knows?
Jbrown620 at English language Wikipedia [CC Past-SA three.0
If we use history as a guide, it's safe to say the line will go on to serve some significance if in cypher else except our commonage consciousness. Just maps are redrawn constantly. What's a timeless border today tin can exist a forgotten boundary tomorrow. History is yet existence written.
READ MORE:
The Great Compromise of 1787
The Iii-Fifths Compromise
Source: https://historycooperative.org/mason-dixon-line/
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