Mason-Dixon Line

Maryland-Pennsylvania Border, National Road, US 40.

Two British surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, probably had no idea that when they set out to draw the demarcation line for Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia (Now West Virginia), that future generations of Americans would interject their names into so many pop culture references. Seen as the dividing line between the North and the South, the names Mason and Dixon have become ingrained in the American psyche. 

However, Mason and Dixon were likely not known for their accomplishment during their lifetime, as the official report in 1768 did not mention their names. The Mason-Dixon name became synonymous with the dividing line between the North and the South, thanks to the Missouri Compromise and the use of “Mason and Dixon’s line,” which described the difference between free states and slave states. All states, from Pennsylvania north, had outlawed slavery by 1820. Slavery in all states south of the Mason-Dixon line remained legal until the passage of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.

Today, the Mason-Dixon line is frequently referenced, appearing in various forms, including a Bugs Bunny cartoon and song lyrics by artists such as Johnny Cash, Alabama, and Al Jolson. A novel by Thomas Pynchon titled Mason & Dixon, along with a song by Mark Knopfler and James Taylor titled “Sailing to Philadelphia,” based on the book, also adds to the mythology of a line that was really only created to solve a border dispute. 

Ultimately, Mason and Dixon had to abandon their surveying 233 miles from their starting point. The abandonment was due to their Iroquois guides’ refusal to go further into Lenape territory. The line was later extended in 1784 by other surveyors to complete the Pennsylvania line, which continued further to the Ohio River, where it forms the boundary between Marshall and Wetzel Counties in West Virginia.

As for the current traveler, it is impossible to distinguish between Maryland and Pennsylvania unless you have signs to guide you. Political borders are like that, artificially created and necessary for signs to outline boundaries and to ensure enforcement. It is wild to me that this line made decades later as a compromise between two colonies by two Englishmen in a country that was soon to be no longer British, whose attempts were stopped by the fighting between two nations that are no longer fully sovereign, whose names were brought to the national attention to defend a practice of human cruelty that is no longer allowed to now serve as a shorthand between the differences between the North and the South when technically the state immediately to the south of the line is not referred to as “Southern” by people from any other state located south of the line. The many contradictions highlighted by the Mason-Dixon line define the American experience as much as anything; hence, the names of two 18th-century British surveyors live on today in the United States.