THE EVOLUTION OF THE MASON AND DIXON LINE
BY MORGAN POITIAUX ROBINSON.
REPRINTED FROM THE APRIL AND MAY, 1902, NUMBERS OF THE ORACLE MAGAZINE, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.
PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL REQUEST.
RICHMOND, VA.;
ORACLE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
1902.
PROBABLY there is no minor incident nor event in the whole course of American history to which the general public attaches more importance than to the Mason and Dixon line.
So closely did the name become associated with the Anti-slavery struggle that, to the average reader and the casual thinker, the Mason and Dixon line has come to signify a strict dividing line between the North and the South: but this is not the case, for Delaware-north of the line-although a Slave State, sided with the North, while Maryland-south of the line-also a Slave State, although officially in the Union, was seriously divided in sentiment, and furnished a by no means inconsiderable quota of troops to the army of the Confederate States of America.
A line originally run for the sole purpose of establishing the exact bounds between the lands of William Penn, Lord Proprietor of the Province of Pennsylvania, and those of Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, Lord Proprietor of the Province of Maryland, chance made it the line of demarcation dividing the Slave from the Anti-slave, or "Free" States, and there are those who even think that it was a mere imaginary line, named as a political catch-phrase, at the beginning of the War between the States, and made to appear the more material by reason of the greater significance of that struggle: while in Europe it is generally confounded with parallel 36° 30' of northerly latitude, which parallel was established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 as the northernmost limit to which slavery could be carried in the territories-a mistake not infrequently made in the United States. But. as a matter of fact, the Mason and Dixon line had been a material reality for all but a century before the outbreak of the War between the States.
The London Company was organized by adventurers and planters in the year 1606, and, on the 10th day of April of the same year, King James the First issued the First Charter to the First Colony in Virginia, which charter provided that divers and sundry His Majesty's loving subjects could "deduce a colony of sundry our people in that part of America, commonly called VIRGINIA, and other parts and territories in America, either appertaining unto us, or which are not now actually possessed by any Christian Prince or people, situate, lying, and being all along the sea-coasts, between four and thirty degrees of northerly latitude from the equinoctial line, and five and forty degrees, and the islands thereunto adjacent, or within one hundred miles1 of the coast thereof:" and then explained that the London Company was to have jurisdiction over the territory "between four and thirty and one and forty degrees of the said latitude,"[1] while the Plymouth Company was to have a similar jurisdiction over the territory "between eight and thirty and five and forty degrees of the said latitude,"[2] thereby making three degrees of the grant neutral territory, the only proviso being "that the plantation and habitation of such of the said colonies as shall plant themselves, as aforesaid, shall not be made within one hundred like English miles of the other of them, that first-began to make their plantation, as aforesaid.[3]
From this it is seen that, according to the first charter, the coast-line of the First Colony in Virginia extended from a point on the coast of New Jersey, just opposite the City of Philadelphia, on southward to the headland which is today known as Cape Fear, North Carolina.
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