Mason-Dixon: Crucible of the Nation
Edward G. Gray
Nov 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Walter Dixon
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Audiobook
15 hr 5 min
Unabridged
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Eligible
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About this audiobook
The story of the Mason-Dixon Line is the story of America's colonial beginnings, nation building, and conflict over slavery. Acclaimed historian Edward Gray offers the first comprehensive narrative of the America's defining border. Formalized in 1767, the Mason-Dixon Line resolved a generations-old dispute that began with the establishment of Pennsylvania in 1681. In 1780, Pennsylvania's Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery inaugurated the next phase in the Line's history. Proslavery and antislavery sentiments had long coexisted in the Maryland-Pennsylvania borderlands, but now African Americans faced a boundary between distinct legal regimes. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, the Mason-Dixon Line became a federal instrument to arrest the northward flow of freedom-seeking Blacks. Only with the end of the Civil War did the Line's significance fade, though it continued to haunt African Americans as Jim Crow took hold. Mason-Dixon tells the gripping story of colonial grandees, Native American diplomats, Quaker abolitionists, fugitives from slavery, capitalist railroad and canal builders, presidents, Supreme Court justices, and Underground Railroad conductors-all contending with the relentless violence and political discord of a borderland that was a transformative force in American history.
About the author
Edward G. Gray is the author of acclaimed books on the revolutionary era and the early American republic, including The Making of John Ledyard and Tom Paine's Iron Bridge. He is professor of early American history at Florida State University.
Walter Dixon is a winner of Audible's "#1 Editor's Choice and Customer Favorites" award. He has narrated more than 200 audiobooks; performed in musical theater, drama and opera productions, and professional stand-up comedy; and voiced commercials, corporate videos, animated features, and vintage radio dramas.
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