Mason-Dixon Line

See also: Mason-Dixon line

English

Alternative forms

• Mason-Dixon line, Mason and Dixon line, Mason's and Dixon's line

Etymology

Named after English astronomers Charles Mason (1728–1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733–1779).

Proper noun

Mason–Dixon Line

1. (historical) The boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, as run (1764–1767) by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, that, before abolition, defined part of the northern boundary of states in which slavery was permitted.
   • 1776, Thomas Jefferson, The Virginia Constitution (Letter to Edmund Pendleton)‎^[1], Philadelphia:

     I am indebted to you for a topic to deny to the Pensylvania claim to a line 39 complete degrees from the equator. As an advocate I shall certainly insist on it; but I wish they would compromise by an extension of Mason & Dixon's line. — They do not agree to the temporary line proposed by our assembly.

   • 1779, George Bryan, chapter 1779, in William Bradford Reed, editor, Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed […] , volume 2, Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, published 1847, George Bryan to President Reed, Baltimore, August 31st, 1779, page 134:

     The Virginia gentlemen offer to divide exactly the 40th degree with us, […] Perhaps we would be as well off with Mason and Dixon's line continued.

   • 1861, Artemus Ward, “Thrilling Scenes in Dixie”, in His Book: with Many Comic Illustrations, New-York: Corleton, published 1862, page 204:

     Suffysit to say I got across Mason & Dixie's line safe at last.

2. The boundary between the free and slave states at the time of the American Civil War, or between states with different segregationist policies in the Jim Crow era.
   • 1833, Charles Augustus Davis, “Letter III […] ”, in Letters of Jack Downing, Major […] , New-York: Harper & brothers, published 1834, page 36:

     […] and he tell'd me Georgia would go for me, arter^[sic] the Gineral^[sic], as soon as any north of mason and dickson^[sic].

   • 1843, Charles Fenno Hoffman, John Holmes Agnew, “Editor's Table”, in The Knickerbocker; Or, New-York Monthly Magazine, volume 22, New-York: John Allen, page 185:

     The epistles are not dated far apart; and in the second, the writer, who dwelleth near ‘Mason and Dixon,’ descants upon the awful climate hereabout in the summer months.

   • 2022, Gary Gerstle, chapter 2, in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order […] , New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, Part I. The New Deal Order, 1930–1980:

     The Soviet press was disseminating in Africa and Asia stories about black children in the South being denied adequate schooling, black accident victims dying because no white hospital in the South would admit them, and African diplomats being refused access to white restaurants and washrooms while traveling south of the Mason-Dixon line.

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