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A quick Yahoo! search on Mason-Dixon line revealed that, logically enough, the Mason-Dixon line is named for the two British men, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who surveyed the land between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Though the Mason-Dixon line is often thought of as the boundary between the Union and the Confederacy, we learned that it was actually drawn about 100 years before the American Civil War. It all started in the early 18th century. Due to imprecise and confusing
land grants, the Penn family (the owners of Pennsylvania) and the Calvert family (who owned Maryland) couldn't agree on the boundaries between the two colonies. In 1750, the feuding neighbors decided to go to court. The Court Chancery in England ruled that the latitude 39°43' north (15 miles south of Philadelphia) should serve as the Pennsylvania / Maryland border (which runs east-west). Surveying the land proved a daunting task, however, and in 1763 experienced surveyors Mason and Dixon were called in to handle the job. After four years of hard work, their 244-mile line was completed and the boundaries were settled. It wasn't until the the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that the boundary took on the role of front
line in the war on slavery: The Compromise established a boundary between the slave states of the south and the free states of the north... This boundary became referred to as the Mason-Dixon line because it began in the east along the Mason-Dixon line and headed westward to the Ohio River and along the Ohio to its mouth at the Mississippi River and then west along 36° 30' North. The Mason-Dixon line is still thought of today as the boundary between the North and the South. We even found an alternative description for the Mason-Dixon: "The line that separates y'all from youse."
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