MASON AND DIXON LINE

also called Mason-Dixon Line, originally the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania in the United States. In the pre-Civil War period it was regarded, together with the Ohio River, as the dividing line between slave states south of it and free-soil states north of it. Between 1763 and 1767 the 233-mile (375-kilometre) line was surveyed along the parallel 3943 by two Englishmen, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, to define the long-disputed boundaries of the overlapping land grants of the Penns, proprietors of Pennsylvania, and the Calverts, proprietors of Maryland. Mason and Dixon also surveyed much of the disputed boundary between Maryland and the territory of Delaware, which had been acquired by William Penn. The term Mason and Dixon Line was first used in congressional debates leading to the Missouri Compromise (1820). Today the Mason and Dixon Line still serves figuratively as the political and social dividing line between the North and the South.