The Mason–Dixon line (or Masons and Dixons line) was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in the resolution of a border dispute between British colonies in Colonial America. It is still a demarcation line among four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (originally part of Virginia). It represents the cultural border between the Southern United States and the Northern United States.Marylands charter of 1632 granted the land north of the entire length of the Potomac River up to the 40th parallel. A problem arose when Charles II granted a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681. The grant defined Pennsylvanias southern border as identical to Marylands northern border, but described it differently, as Charles relied on an inaccurate map. The terms of the grant clearly indicate that Charles II and William Penn believed the 40th parallel would intersect the Twelve-Mile Circlearound 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 colonys capital city. Negotiations ensued after the problem was discovered in 1681. A compromise proposed by Charles II in 1682, which might have resolved the issue, was undermined by Penn receiving the additional grant of the Three Lower Counties along Delaware Bay, which later became the Delaware Colony, a satellite of Pennsylvania. These lands had been part of Marylands original grant.[1] In 1732 the proprietary governor of Maryland, Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore, signed a provisional agreement with William Penns sons, which drew a line somewhere in between and renounced the Calvert claim to Delaware. But later, Lord Baltimore claimed that the document he had signed did not contain the terms he had agreed to, and refused to put the agreement into effect. Beginning in the mid-1730s, violence erupted between settlers claiming various loyalties to Maryland and Pennsylvania. The border conflict would be known as Cresaps War. The issue remained unresolved until the Crown intervened in 1760, ordering Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimoreto accept the 1732 agreement. Marylands border with Delaware was to be based on the Transpeninsular Lineand the Twelve-Mile Circle around New Castle. The Pennsylvania–Maryland border was defined as the line of latitude 15 miles south of the southernmost house in Philadelphia. As part of the settlement, the Penns and Calverts commissioned the English team of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to survey the newly established boundaries between the Province of Pennsylvania, the Province of Maryland, and Delaware Colony. In 1779, Pennsylvania and Virginia agreed To extend Masons and Dixons line, due west, five degrees of longitude, to be computed from the river Delaware, for the southern boundary of Pennsylvania, and that a meridian, drawn from the western extremity thereof to the northern limit of the said state, be the western boundary of Pennsylvania for ever. After Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1781, the western part of this line and the Ohio River became a border between slave and free states, although Delaware retained slavery until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 07:22:54 +0000
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