Mason Dixon Line Symbolism

The Mason-Dixon line is more than just a line, and more than just a border between states. It started as a feud between two people over land, and it ended up becoming a major part of our history in the United States. It represented freedom, and because of the effect it had on history and its people, it became extremely symbolic. So much so, that the symbolism of the Mason-Dixon line continues to resonate today. In the beginning the Mason-Dixon line wasn’t about slavery at all. Really, nothing could be further from the truth of the matter. It all really started as a land dispute between William Penn and Lord Baltimore, which turned into a dispute lasting years and generations. The actual line didn’t even get decided until 1767 when two men named Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were sent to mark the line (121,122). This line ended up being the most famous of all the borders in
According to Kate DeVan Filer,” The marker stands to show where the North ends and the South starts” (123). This made it both a bridge and a barricade to everyone it affected. It was a bridge in that it helped the slaves escape to freedom, and a barricade in that it separated groups of people, like families, living along the border, from one another. Where did the loyalties lie of the ones living close by the border when the slaves crossed? To all living along the line that line acted as a wall even if it was only a symbolic wall. Just like in Elizabeth Bishops poem, “The Map,” where she talks about how shapes and colors on the map aren’t really what we see in reality (213, 214). How one sees objects on a map is all in perspective, the same as how one might have seen the line back then before the Civil War. That line was capable of suggesting meanings or connections beyond itself. Where it’s not about actual geography but about refusing to standardize the images each person projects onto a place or