Mason-Dixon line
Historic sectional divide
The Mason-Dixon line is the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, surveyed in the 1760s to settle a colonial land dispute.
Before the Civil War, it came to represent the division between free Northern states and slave-holding Southern states.
The line still symbolizes the cultural boundary between North and South: He's from south of the Mason-Dixon line.
- slaveOwned human, forced laborer
- UnionNamed political entity
- land surveyMeasuring and mapping terrain
- Missouri Compromise1820 slavery boundary legislation
- secessionFormal withdrawal from union
Civil War · Jim Crow · survey markers · Abraham Lincoln · boundary · antebellum South · cotton kingdom · sectionalism · Dixie · border state · historical boundaries · territorial limits · master · division · border disputes · Potomac River · North-South divide · free states
- Eastern U.S.Appalachians, Blue Ridge Mountains, Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic coast, Piedmont
- Antebellum Americaantebellum era, Compromise of 1850, sectionalism, states' rights, Fugitive Slave Act
- Southern HistoryDeep South, Antebellum, Old South, Dixie, Confederate
- North American BordersUS-Canada border, US-Mexico border, 49th parallel, Mexican border, Canadian border
- Colonial AmericaGeorge Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, Declaration of Independence
- Latitudesequator, Arctic Circle, Antarctic Circle, North Pole, South Pole
Mason-Dixon linenational unity
Shared identity across citizenry
E pluribus unum · Continental Divide · reunification · 49th parallel · transcontinental railroad
Mason-Dixon linenatural boundary
Terrain-formed border between areas
Continental Divide · watershed · natural feature · Mississippi River · Rio Grande
Mason-Dixon lineUnderground Railroad
Covert abolitionist escape network
free soil · Canada · Emancipation Proclamation · Juneteenth · 13th Amendment
Mason, line, lines, lined, lining, linear, lineage, lineal, linearity