18 October 1767 -- the Mason-Dixon Line

TODAY IN HISTORY. On October 18, 1767, the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania was agreed upon. It was called the Mason-Dixon Line because it was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in order to resolve a border dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland when they were still British colonies in Colonial America. The Line is still a demarcation line among four US states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia, which in 1767 was still part of Virginia. ~~~~~ After Pennsylvania abolished slavery, the Mason–Dixon Line became a demarcation line for the legality of slavery. But the demarcation did not extend beyond Pennsylvania because Delaware, then a slave state, extended north and east of the boundary. Also lying north and east of the boundary was New Jersey, where slavery was formally abolished in 1846, but former slaves continued to be "apprenticed" to their masters until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865. ~~~~~ In the late 1700s, the states south of the Mason-Dixon line would begin arguing for the perpetuation of slavery, while the north hoped to phase out the ownership of human chattel. This period, which historians consider the era of "The New Republic," ended with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, another line drawn to extend the Mason-Dixon Line west. The Compromise accepted the states south of the line as slave-holding and those north of the line as free. The Compromise, along with those that followed it, eventually failed. ~~~~~ Delaware's position along the Mason-Dixon Line made it a key in the battle between abolitionists and slaveholding states. Its 1776 state constitution had banned the importation of slaves, and state legislation in 1797 effectively stopped the export of slaves by declaring exported slaves automatically free. The state’s population in the 1790 census was 15% black, but only 30% of these were free blacks. By the 1820 census, 78% of Delaware’s blacks were free. By 1840, 87% were free. Both escaped slaves and legally free blacks living anywhere near the line were vulnerable to kidnapping by slave-catchers operating out of Maryland. One of the most famous kidnappers was Patty Cannon, a notoriously violent woman who, with her son-in-law Joe Johnson, ran a tavern on the Delaware-Maryland line near the Nanticoke River. The Cannon-Johnson gang seized blacks as far north as Philadelphia and transported them south for sale. In 1829, Cannon and Johnson were arrested and charged with kidnapping, and Cannon was charged with several murders. Johnson was flogged, and Cannon died in jail before trial, reportedly a suicide by poison. Her skull is kept in a hatbox at the Dover Public Library. For free blacks in Delaware, freedom was quite restricted. Blacks could not vote, or testify in court against whites. After Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion in Virginia triggered rumors and panic about a black insurrection, the Delaware legislature banned blacks from owning weapons, or meeting in groups larger than twelve. ~~~~~ Because the Missouri Compromise of 1820 designated Mason and Dixon’s west line as the national divide between the "free" and "slave" states east of the Ohio River, the line suddenly acquired new significance. Through the first half of the 19th century, the Mason-Dixon Line represented the line of freedom for tens of thousands of blacks escaping slavery in the south. The Underground Railroad provided food and temporary shelter at secret way-stations, and guided or sometimes transported northbound slaves across the Line. The spirituals sung by these slaves included coded references to guide escaping slaves : the song "Follow the drinking gourd" referred to the Big Dipper from which runaways could sight the North Star; the River Jordan was the Mason-Dixon Line; Pennsylvania was the Promised Land. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed slave owners to pursue their escaped slaves into the north, the line of freedom became the Canadian border, "Canaan" in the spirituals, and abolitionists created Underground Railroad stops all the way to Canada. Thomas Garrett, a member of Wilmington Delaware’s Quaker community, was one of the most prominent conductors on the Underground Railroad. In 1813, while Garrett was still living in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a free black employee of his family’s was kidnapped and taken into Maryland. Garrett succeeded in rescuing her, but the experience reportedly made him a committed abolitionist, and he dedicated the next fifty years of his life to helping others escape slavery. Garrett moved to Wilmington in 1822. He befriended and helped Harriet Tubman as she brought group after group of escaping slaves over the line; his house was the final step to freedom. Garrett was caught in 1848, prosecuted and convicted, forthrightly telling the court he had helped over 1,400 slaves escape. Judge Roger Taney ordered Garrett to reimburse the owners of slaves he was known to have helped, and it bankrupted him, but he continued in his work, assisting approximately 1,300 more slaves to freedom by 1864.  Taney went on to become Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, and wrote the majority decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), declaring that no blacks, slave or free, could ever be US citizens, and striking down the Missouri Compromise. In the buildup to the Civil War, Delaware was a microcosm of the country, sharply split between abolitionists and pro-slavery. Like other Union border states, Delaware remained a slave state during the war, although its slave population had fallen to only a few hundred. President Abraham Lincoln offered a federal reimbursement of $500 per slave to Delaware slave-owners if Delaware would abolish slavery, but the state legislature stubbornly refused. Lincoln’s January 1,1863, Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery in the Confederate states, but not in the Union border states. After the Civil War, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas outlawed slavery on or before their individual ratifications of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. So as the Thirteenth Amendment neared ratification by 27 of the 36 states on December 6, 1865, America’s last two remaining slave states were Kentucky and Delaware. Delaware didn’t ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments until 1901. ~~~~~ In the mid-20th century, the Mason-Dixon Line was the backdrop for one of the five school desegregation cases that were eventually consolidated into the US Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case. ~~~~~ In popular usage, the Mason–Dixon Line symbolizes a cultural boundary between the North and the South, popularly called "Dixie." One hundred years after Mason and Dixon began their effort to chart the Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary, soldiers from opposite sides of the line left their blood on the fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the Southern states' final and fatal attempt to breach the Mason-Dixon Line during the Civil War. One hundred and one years after the Britons completed their line, the United States finally admitted men of any complexion born within the nation to the rights of citizenship with the ratification of the 14th Amendment. ~~~~~ When the Mason–Dixon Line was drawn in 1767, it was marked by stones every mile and "crownstones" every five miles, using stone shipped from England. Most of the stones still exist. The Maryland side of each stone says (M) and the Delaware and Pennsylvania sides say (P) because Delaware was dependent on Pennsylvania at the time. Crownstones include the two coats-of-arms -- the side facing north bear William Penn's arms and the side facing south bear the arms of the Calvert family that founded Maryland. Today, while a number of the original stones are missing or buried, many are still visible, resting on public land and protected by iron cages. ~~~~~ Dear readers, sometimes we take history for granted. Every American has used the Mason-Dixon Line in conversation to denote the Old South - 'south of the Mason-Dixon.' The mere mention of the Mason-Dixon Line conjures up the fight against slavery and the Civil War. But like all phrases that have become commonplace, the historical significance of the Mason-Dixon Line has been blurred by time. Wherever you live -- whatever country or American region -- look around you and you will find important names and places in history. Take some time to learn about them and consider their significance because they are the building blocks of today and tomorrow.