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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: CN and Mason-Dixon line
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2013 Nov 27, 11:00 -0800
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2013 Nov 27, 11:00 -0800
To provide a slightly more elaborate explanation:
The "Mason-Dixon Line" forms the border between Pennsylvania (to the north) and Maryland (to the south). As I understand it, modern surveying finds it to be no more than 5 feet off from the parallel of latitude that defines it.
It would have remained an obscure feat of surveying had it not been the controversy over slavery in the United States in the early-to-mid 1800s. Every state south of the Mason-Dixon line (to be more accurate, every state that lies completely south of the Mason-Dixon line, since most of Delaware and a small part of New Jersey lie south of the line, as well as parts of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana) were states that allowed slavery, while all those to the north forbade it.
The Mason-Dixon line has thus become engraved in American culture as the dividing line between North (industrialized, often more socially progressive) and South (plantation farming, usually more socially conservative)
Interestingly, Maryland did not secede from the United States during its Civil War, the only slave state not to do so.
The "Mason-Dixon Line" forms the border between Pennsylvania (to the north) and Maryland (to the south). As I understand it, modern surveying finds it to be no more than 5 feet off from the parallel of latitude that defines it.
It would have remained an obscure feat of surveying had it not been the controversy over slavery in the United States in the early-to-mid 1800s. Every state south of the Mason-Dixon line (to be more accurate, every state that lies completely south of the Mason-Dixon line, since most of Delaware and a small part of New Jersey lie south of the line, as well as parts of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana) were states that allowed slavery, while all those to the north forbade it.
The Mason-Dixon line has thus become engraved in American culture as the dividing line between North (industrialized, often more socially progressive) and South (plantation farming, usually more socially conservative)
Interestingly, Maryland did not secede from the United States during its Civil War, the only slave state not to do so.
From: Sean C <yhshuh@aol.com>
To: luabel@ymail.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2013 10:30 AM
Subject: [NavList] Re: CN and Mason-Dixon line
"Re the current discussion of the Mason-Dixon Line, is that the same Mason-Dixon Line that one read of in American history[?]" -AlanThere's only one. :)
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