take a Southerner where the South start and you might get answers like " where one - syllable Christian Bible become two or three " or " where the most honored food aregrits and gravy . " By those measures , the South should theoretically commence in Richmond , Virginia , or Lexington , Kentucky , or even Wheeling , West Virginia .
But theMason - Dixon Line , which has been reckon for 200 years as the boundary wrinkle between the North and South in the United States , turns that schematic sociological thinking upside down .
That ’s because the Mason - Dixon Line runs break up Maryland from Pennsylvania and Delaware , which are all consider Northern State . So if the Mason - Dixon Line really is the dividing argument between the North and South , why does it put Maryland — the place of the crabby person cake — in the South ?
Who Were Mason and Dixon?
Todd Babcock , a Pennsylvania surveyor , and founder ofThe Mason and Dixon Line Preservation Partnership , say Charles Mason ( an astronomer ) and Jeremiah Dixon ( a surveyor ) acquaint surveying technique to North America that were used to draw entire boundary telephone line for westerly states in the U.S.
" In many regard the technique we use today are very like to those used by Mason and Dixon , " Babcock says . " I utilize the analogy that Mason and Dixon used the constellation of stars to manoeuver them and today we employ a constellation of satellites . "
The Work of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon
In 1763 , the King of England lease Mason and Dixon — who were Englishmen — to settle a estate difference between the aristocratic colonial kinsperson , QuakerWilliam Penn II and Charles Calvert ( AKA Lord Baltimore III ) of Maryland .
Lord Baltimore claimed demesne that according to the Quakers was rightfully within the Pennsylvania border . The two families quarreled and fought over Edwin Herbert Land for decades . Colonial landowners along the business discriminate the two proprietors ' state feared being asked to pay taxis to both the Penns and Calverts because both families were claiming the same land .
Over 58 months , Mason and Dixon follow a 233 - mile ( 374 - kilometer ) stretch of earth , from Philadelphia westward . It was mostly wilderness , and they build the boundaries of Pennsylvania , Maryland , Delaware and western Virginia ( now West Virginia ) . It became a steadfast boundary transmission line , known as the Maryland - Pennsylvania Boundary .
The Penns were to the North with Philadelphia as their hub , and the Calverts to the South with Baltimore as their hub . The Mason - Dixon Line also include the 83 - mile ( 133 - kilometer ) northerly border between Pennsylvania ( which is now Delaware ) and eastern Maryland . The line starts in the southwest corner of Delaware and runs northward .
How Did Mason and Dixon Draw the Line?
It was punctilious and painstaking work at that time , as the human beings used the stars as guidance to trace north and arc telephone circuit of latitude along the fresh Maryland - Pennsylvania border . Mason and Dixon — withIroquois take leadinga traveling party of axmen , estate car number one wood and attendee add up about 120 in the party — trim through virgin timberland as they went westward .
The men used an astronomical clock they brought from England to serve determine the oblateness of theEarth . " It tot to our understanding of the shape of the Earth and that it was n’t a arrant sphere , " Babcock tell . " It was bulging in the midsection and Mason and Dixon found that while the Earth was indeed round it had undulations . "
Manmade Markers
The men also used a zenith sector , " a graduated arc of a erect circle , " which was teamed with a telescope and plumb line . This tripod - mount surveying tool , sleep with as a Bird Transit ( after its inventor , John Bird ) , was thought lost in history ’s ashbin , but was find by accident in Philadelphia . Now restored , it sits in showing in Independence Hall .
Babcock says the gentleman’s gentleman painstakingly placed limestone posts , also brought from England , at each international mile along the way — " crownstones " were set every 5 miles ( 8 kilometer ) . These crownstones were carve " C " on the southern side of the rock music for Calvert and a " atomic number 15 " carved on the northern side for Penn . Some gem had the Penn coat of sleeve and others the Calvert coat of arms .
The Isidor Feinstein Stone were massive and matter as much as 500 to 700 pound ( 226 to 317 kilograms ) each , so when Mason and Dixon and the squad take to the Appalachian Mountains , they had to stop placing them around Hancock , Maryland , because they simply weighed too much .
They used wooden posts the eternal sleep of the way . They had travel 132 miles ( 212 kilometers ) from Philadelphia .
Natural Markers
Meanwhile , the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey was decided by much more conventional mean value , they merely used the Delaware River as a dividing line , as it skirts east of Philadelphia and nominate its way to the Atlantic Ocean .
Additionally , the " twelve mile circle"was constructed as an arcthat separates the Delaware and Pennsylvania sides near Delaware Bay .
In 1991 , the Mason Dixon Line Preservation Partnership was spring between a mathematical group of surveyor from the Maryland side and a group of surveyors from Pennsylvania to transmit an stock list of the original 132 markers . They found all but 10 . Floods , the Civil War , James Leonard Farmer cut playing field , and people using them for target practice had forget many of the stone damage or destroyed .
The Dividing Line Between the North and South
So what about this surveying led to the Mason - Dixon Line becoming the unofficial dividing argument between where the North stop and the South begins ? Blame government , not Mason and Dixon ’s line , for the capsize musical theme of North vs. South .
In 1820 , Maryland was the northernmost striver country . Pennsylvania abolished slaveholding . As part of the Missouri Compromise thatsought to even out the numberof striver states and free State , Maryland was relegated to the " South " because of slavery . The U.S. Congress then declared that territories in the south of the Mason - Dixon Line were slave DoS .
And because the South was holding closely to the idea of slavery , Maryland was the South . Enslaved someone were freeonce they ill-treat into Pennsylvania ( at least until the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 ) . Of course , the Missouri compromise did not last and the country would be embroil in civil war a few decades afterward .
So there you have it . The Mason - Dixon Line was a southern bounds and a symbol but , more importantly , it ’s a lesson on how Mason and Dixon ’s calculations using the stars have charm surveyors for more than two centuries .
