The Mason-Dixon Line was the result of a 1760s survey that resolved a boundary dispute between the Penn family, the founders of the Pennsylvania colony, and the Calvert family, who founded Maryland. While the line is technically the northern boundary of Maryland, it has had greater significance as a legal and cultural divide. During the antebellum years, the line signified the division between the slave South and the free North. After the CiViL War, the line continued to denote a cultural and emotional boundary between North and South.
After three generations of boundary disputes, the Penn and Calvert families hired British surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who used celestial navigation tools from 1765 to 1768 to mark a negotiated latitudinal boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland at 39 degrees, 43 minutes, 17.4 seconds north. Once set, the Mason-Dixon Line became a significant American demarcation line.
Previously referred to by Thomas Jefferson as the geographical line that reflected a moral and political divide, the Mason-Dixon Line became the symbolic division between free states and slave states during the congressional debates over the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The line represented freedom for escaped slaves, and free African Americans and escaped slaves formed communities north of the line. As with many boundary areas, proslavery and abolitionist views existed on both sides. Slave catchers had allies in Pennsylvania, while sympathetic Maryland residents assisted runaway slaves. Especially after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the area saw activity by both the Underground Railroad and slave catchers.
However, the Mason-Dixon Line was not the boundary between the Union and the Confederacy. While Maryland allowed slavery and contained many Confederate sympathizers, it remained part of the Union.
After the Civil War, the Mason-Dixon Line had diminished legal significance but retained its symbolic role as the cultural division between North and South.
See also ABOLITION; slavery.
McClellan, George Brinton (1826-1885) Union general
George B. McClellan, called “the Young Napoleon” during the CiViL War, was known more for his organizational skills than his fighting ability or political talent. McClellan was born to a wealthy and distinguished family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A brilliant student, McClellan entered the United States Military Academy at West Point at the age of 15 and graduated second in his class in 1846. Like many of his classmates, McClellan served in the Mexi-can-American War, where he earned promotion for courage on the battlefield. In 1857 McClellan resigned his commission to accept a position as chief engineer and president of the Illinois Central railroad. In this capacity, he honed his considerable skills as a businessman. He also became acquainted with his future commander in chief, Abraham Lincoln, who was working as a lawyer for the Illinois Central.
When the Civil War broke out, McClellan was appointed commander of the Department of the Ohio. Now a major general, he quickly won fame with a minor victory in West Virginia, 10 days before the Union defeat under General Irvin McDowell at the First Battle of Bull Run. When Lincoln looked for replacements for the bumbling McDowell, he turned to McClellan, one of the rare heroes of the early war. Shortly afterward, the handsome and charismatic 35-year-old was given command of the armies around Washington, D. C. In November, McClellan replaced the elderly and ailing Winfield Scott as general in chief of all of the Union forces in the country. It seemed to the arrogant young general that he was destined for greatness. “I can do it all,” he said. He wrote his wife: “All tell me that I am held responsible for the fate of the nation, and that all its resources shall be placed at my disposal.” While that was true enough, personality clashes, political blunders, and bad generalship would soon dim McClellan’s bright future as the nation’s “savior.”
At first, McClellan vindicated Lincoln’s appointment. In the fall and winter of 1861 he disciplined, drilled, and organized the Army of the Potomac, the main army of the eastern theater. More than that, he instilled pride into the men under his command. Washingtonians thrilled to the parades and reviews that displayed the power of the United States. “On to Richmond!” was the cry accompanying the superbly executed marches of McClellan’s devoted men. As late summer turned to autumn and autumn to winter, however, McClellan was increasingly criticized for inaction. Press, public, and politicians alike openly wondered if the Army of the Potomac was ever going to leave Washington to attack the Confederate army in northern Virginia. Congressional investigations tarnished McClellan’s reputation. A frustrated Lincoln remarked that if McClellan did not intend to use the army, he (Lincoln) wanted to borrow it.
McClellan responded by attacking his critics. In the process, he alienated many of his former supporters, including the president, whom he derided as “the original gorilla.” Increasingly suspicious of his detractors, McClellan cultivated friendly politicians and reporters. A Democrat, he appointed many generals who shared his political beliefs, including the idea that the war should not be fought to end slavery. These actions angered many Republicans in Congress and created friction between McClellan and Lincoln, particularly given the fact that the longer the war went on, the more emancipation was considered as a serious option.
McClellan defended his inaction, arguing that the enemy was higher in number and better prepared than his own, even when confronted with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. He unwisely preferred to keep his strategic plans a secret and bitterly resented any political interference with what he considered purely military matters. Some of McClellan’s modern biographers have even advanced the argument that he was psychologically incapable of taking decisive action.
McClellan finally presented a plan of invasion to Lincoln, and it was a good one. He envisioned one huge offensive movement to capture the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia, by transporting the Army of the Potomac down the Chesapeake Bay to the tip of the Virginia Peninsula. If Richmond fell and the Confederate army was decisively defeated, the war would be over. Finally, in the spring of 1862, after many months of prodding and pushing, McClellan’s army was on the move for the Peninsular campaign. McClellan laid siege against the vastly outnumbered Confederates at Yorktown for a month. McClellan’s unnecessary delay allowed the Southern army precious time to prepare the defense of Richmond. As always, McClellan sincerely believed that he was facing a more powerful and numerous army than his own. He constantly asked Lincoln for more men and supplies, prompting Lincoln’s famous observation that “sending troops to McClellan was like shoveling flies across the barnyard—most of them never seemed to get there.”
McClellan slowly but surely advanced toward Richmond and came within five miles of capturing the city. His forward movement was permanently stopped when, after the Battle of Seven Pines (May 31-June 1, 1862), Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia. General Lee launched a counterattack that drove the Army of the Potomac back to the James
George Brinton McClellan (National Archives)
River in the Seven Days’ Battle (June 25-July 1, 1862). Defeated but defiant, McClellan blamed his loss on the politicians in Washington who refused him the support he requested. Lincoln, disappointed by the lackluster performance of his general, ordered him back to northern Virginia to join with Gen. John Pope’s new army. Lincoln also removed McClellan from his position as general in chief, replacing him with Henry W. Halleck. Unfortunately, Pope was far worse than McClellan and suffered one of the most humiliating defeats of the war at the Second Battle of Bull Run (August 29-30, 1862). Lincoln had no choice but to reappoint McClellan to rebuild the shattered remnants of the Army of the Potomac, a task he eagerly accepted.
Meanwhile, buoyed by his recent victories over the Union army, Robert E. Lee brought the war to the North when his army entered Frederick, Maryland, on September 4, 1862, prompting fears that an attack on Washington, D. C., was near. “Little Mac” slowly moved the Army of the Potomac into position between Washington and the Confederates. The audacious Lee then split his army in the face of a much larger foe and sent Gen. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson to capture the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. By accident, a Union soldier found a copy of Lee’s official orders directing
Jackson away from the main body of the Army of Northern Virginia. This vital information was in McClellan’s hands within hours. “Here is a paper,” exulted McClellan, “with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home.” Few commanding generals have possessed such precise information about their opponents’ intentions, but McClellan did not strike quickly enough to destroy portions of Lee’s divided army. Another opportunity to bring the war to an end was lost. Instead, the two armies met on ground of Lee’s choosing, just north of Sharpsburg, Maryland.
On the morning of September 17, the Federals attacked the Confederates along Antietam Creek, which gave the battle its name in the North. Critics then and now of McClellan’s generalship on the bloodiest one-day battle in U. S. history (23,000 casualties) claim that his plan was poorly executed and that he failed to use the thousands of Union troops who were held in reserve, thus minimizing the Northern advantage in numbers. The battle was a tactical draw. Nevertheless, General Lee’s invasion failed, and the Army of Northern Virginia retreated across the Potomac to its Virginia camps. The North claimed the Battle of Antietam as a victory, and on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
After the battle, Lincoln urged McClellan to fight aggressively against Lee. Characteristically, McClellan felt a new campaign required many more men and more supplies. Finally, in November 1862, the president relieved McClellan of his command and replaced him with Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. After a tearful farewell to his soldiers, McClellan moved to New York City and never commanded an army in the field again.
McClellan remained popular with his men, and for that reason he was an attractive candidate for the Democratic Party in the 1864 presidential election. Although strongly pro-Union, McClellan was tainted by the peace wing of his party, which advocated an end to the war through negotiation. Lincoln was reelected by a substantial margin, including most of the soldiers’ vote. After the war, McClellan worked as the chief engineer of the New York City Department of Docks (1870-72) and later was elected governor of New Jersey. Like many other Civil War generals, McClellan published an autobiography, McClellan’s Own Story (1887), a strong defense of his war record. He died in Orange, New York, on October 29, 1885.
Further reading: James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief (New York: Penguin Press, 2009); Thomas J. Rowland, “In the Shadows of Grant and Sherman: George B. McClellan Revisited,” Civil War History 40 (Sept. 1994): 202-225; Stephen W. Sears,
George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999); T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981).
McDowell, Irvin (1818-1885) Union general Irvin McDowell was a Union general blamed for the loss of Bull Run during the Civil War. McDowell was born in Columbus, Ohio, on October 15, 1818. He attended the College de Troyes in France before being admitted to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1834, where he graduated four years later ranked in the middle of his class. He served as a second lieutenant in the 1st U. S. Artillery during garrison duty along the Canadian border. McDowell next fought in the Mexican-American War (1846-48), winning a brevet promotion to captain for gallantry at the Battle of Buena Vista in February 1847. He was subsequently assigned to Washington, D. C., where for the next 12 years he performed well in staff assignments, rising to major and frequently serving as aide de camp to Gen. Winfield Scott.
After the Civil War commenced, McDowell used political connections to advance three grades to brigadier general on May 11, 1861. He then accepted command of the Department of Northeastern Virginia and began cobbling together a force composed mainly of 90-day volunteers and poorly trained militia. Despite his lack of experience in handling large numbers of troops, McDowell discharged his duties with energy and ability, and by July he possessed a scratch force of 50,000 enthusiastic citizen soldiers. With President Abraham Lincoln’s prodding, on July 16, 1861, McDowell led his overconfident amateurs southward down the Warrenton Turnpike with cheers of “On to Richmond!” During the fateful encounter at the First Battle of Bull Run, on July 21, 1861, McDowell attacked slowly and piecemeal, allowing the Southerners to pour in additional units and hold off the Northerners. Exhausted by a day of fighting in intense heat, the Federals wilted in the face of Confederate reinforcements and departed the battlefield in an embarrassing rout. Held up as a scapegoat for defeat, McDowell was replaced in August by Gen. George Brinton McClellan.
When the Army of the Potomac was organized in August 1861, McDowell received command of the I Corps along with promotion to major general as of March 1862. But he played no role in McClellan’s ambitious Peninsular campaign because the activities of Gen. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley convinced President Lincoln that Washington was threatened. McDowell next commanded the III Corps in the Army of Virginia under Gen. John Pope. With Pope, he was blamed for the defeat at Second Bull Run on August 29-30, 1862, and was relieved from field command. It was not until July 1864 that he transferred to the distant Department of the Pacific and then the Department of California in 1865.
After the war McDowell gradually resuscitated his reputation as a fine military administrator. He commanded the Department of the East in 1868, rising to major general in 1872. He next served four years as head of the Department of the South before returning to the Department of the Pacific in 1876. McDowell died in San Francisco on May 4, 1885, a talented but tainted wartime general.
Further reading: Russell H. Beatie, Army of the Potomac, Vol. 1: Birth of Command, November 1860-September 1861 (New York: Da Capo Press, 2002); Wilmer L. Jones, Generals in Blue and Gray, 2 vols. (Westport, Conn.: Prae-ger, 2004).
—John C. Fredriksen
McLaws, Lafayette (1821-1897) Confederate general Lafayette McLaws was a Confederate general. Born in Georgia, McLaws graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1842. He fulfilled a long period of routine frontier assignments in the West, then served in the Mexican-American War (1846-48) before rising to the rank of captain in 1851. In 1861, after the Civil War commenced, McLaws resigned his commission to serve as colonel of 10th Georgia Infantry, rising to brigadier general in September of that year.
McLaws first experienced Civil War combat in spring
1862 as part of the defense against Gen. George Brinton McClellan’s Peninsular campaign, and he saw further action at Antietam and Fredericksburg in September and December 1862. A respected commander, he was elevated to major general on May 23, 1863. He commanded a mixed force of Georgians, Mississippians, and South Carolinians, all of whom were disciplined to a fine fighting edge. McLaws’s excellent fighting record in many battles won him warm commendations from Gen. Robert E. Lee. In 1863 he fought capably but without distinction at Chancel-lorsville and Gettysburg, where his lack of initiative probably cost him a promotion to lieutenant general.
McLaws’s military career hit a stumbling block in fall
1863 when he accompanied James Longstreet’s force during the Knoxville, Tennessee, campaign. He repeatedly tried to talk his superior out of an ill-advised attack on Fort Sanders, and when the assault was disastrously repulsed with heavy losses, Longstreet relieved him of command. A court of inquiry subsequently cleared McLaws of all charges, and he was next assigned troops under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina. McLaws surrendered at Durham Station on April 26, 1865. He settled in Savannah, Georgia, after the war and died there on July 24, 1897, a capable but disrespected military figure.
Further reading: John Oeffinger, ed., A Soldier’s General: The Civil War Letters of Major General Lafayette McLaws (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
—John C. Fredriksen
Meade, George Gordon (1815-1872) Union general Union general George Gordon Meade was born on December 31, 1815, in Cadiz, Spain, to Margaret Butler and Richard Worsam Meade (a prominent Philadelphia merchant). The ninth of 11 children, Meade spent much of his boyhood in Pennsylvania. His father’s financial losses and premature death forced Meade to pursue a military education and a career in engineering. Graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1835, he served in the Seminole War, subsequently leaving the army for eight years to work as a civil engineer. Marriage (to Margaret Sergeant, the daughter of Representative John Sergeant of Philadelphia) and fatherhood prompted Meade to return to the service in 1842. With the assistance of his brother-in-law, Representative Henry A. Wise of Virginia, he was appointed second lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers, where his duties included construction of lighthouses and breakwaters.
Meade fought in the Mexican-American War (alongside fellow engineers Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston), earning a brevet to first lieutenant for his work during the siege of Veracruz. In August 1861, Meade (a captain with influential political connections in his home state) received command of a Pennsylvania brigade.
Meade’s brigade joined the Army of the Potomac in June 1862 for Gen. George Brinton Mcclellan’s ill-fated Peninsular campaign. Serving in the same division as friend and fellow Pennsylvanian General John F. Reynolds, Meade fought at Mechanicsville and Gaines’s Mill and was seriously wounded at Glendale, Virginia. He returned to the army in August 1862 to take charge of Reynolds’s former brigade at the Second Battle of Bull Run, where Reynolds commanded the division. Meade inherited the division after Reynolds departed for recruiting duties and led the reserves with skill and conspicuous bravery at the September battles of South Mountain and Antietam, Maryland.
In December at the Battle of Fredericksburg, with Reynolds now commanding the First Corps, Meade directed the reserves in a vigorous but unsupported attack on the Confederate right. Following disastrous losses in the Union attack on Marye’s Heights, Gen. Joseph Hooker assumed command of the Army of the Potomac and Meade took over the Fifth Corps. At the Battle of Chancel-lorsville in May 1863, he was among a minority of corps commanders who advised Hooker to stay and fight rather than withdraw across the Rapahannock River. Hooker, deciding to retreat, crossed the river ahead of his men while Meade’s corps covered the army’s rear.
On June 28, with the Army of the Potomac on the move and preparing for battle, President Abraham Lincoln, having lost patience with generals who refused to fight, appointed Meade to replace Hooker after Reynolds had declined the promotion. Meade directed the most important campaign of his career during his first week as army commander. In early June, General Lee had marched the Army of Northern Virginia through Maryland into Pennsylvania. In pursuit, the Army of the Potomac’s forward wing (commanded by Reynolds) made contact with Confederate forces on July 1, 1863, near Gettysburg. The outnumbered Federals retreated south through town and took up a defensive position on Cemetery Hill. Learning that Reynolds had been killed, Meade ignored military protocol and sent Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, another Pennsylvanian, to assume field command. When he reached Gettysburg, Hancock calmly restored order to the retreating troops and secured the Union position.
Meade ordered the army to concentrate at Gettysburg. Arriving on the field around midnight on July 1, he placed his available troops in an arc that extended from Culp’s Hill southeast of Gettysburg, around Cemetery Hill to its west, and south along Cemetery Ridge. Meade instructed his Third Corps commander, Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, a New York politician, to extend the Union line to Little Round Top, a prominent hill suitable for artillery. Hearing on the morning of July 2 that the Third Corps was not yet in position, Meade sent messages to Sickles directing him to take up his assigned line. Sickles, who erroneously believed that the slightly higher but longer rise along the Emmitsburg Road would make a better defensive position than Cemetery Ridge, ignored Meade’s instructions and advanced his corps about three-quarters of a mile in front of the designated Union line. Confederate forces attacked the Union left just as Meade rode over to Sickles in person to order him back to Cemetery Ridge. The Third Corps was forced to retreat under fire while Meade hurried men from Culp’s Hill to Cemetery Ridge to fill the gaps left by Sickles’s ill-considered advance. The Union left secured, he then rushed men back to the right to meet a Confederate attack on Cemetery Hill. A brigade from the Fifth Corps had occupied Little Round Top in time to save it for the Union, but Sickles’s mistake on July 2 cost the Third Corps dearly.
Late on July 2, Meade called a council of war among his top officers. There was no question he intended to remain at Gettysburg, but soliciting his corps commanders’ opinions about the best course of action for the next day, whether offensive or defensive, left him vulnerable to later charges of weak leadership. In the event, Meade ordered a dawn attack to remove Confederate troops from the foot of Culp’s Hill, and he prepared the army for an expected enemy assault on the Union center. That assault began around 1:00 P. M. with a terrific artillery barrage followed by an impressive infantry assault. The Confederates, facing devastating artillery and rifle fire, were unable to carry the strong Union position. Meade had won a resounding victory, but he decided against an immediate counterattack, and Lee retreated south late on July 4 with the Union army in pursuit.
Lincoln was reportedly dismayed that Meade allowed Lee and his army to escape across the Potomac River, but more biting and politically motivated criticisms would follow. Disgruntled corps commanders Gen. Abner Doubleday and Gen. O. O. Howard complained that Meade had favored Hancock over higher-ranking officers. Meade’s disloyal chief of staff, Gen. Daniel Butterfield (a Hooker partisan), falsely charged in testimony to the congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War that Meade had wanted to retreat from Gettysburg on July 1. General Sickles, motivated by the need to repair his own reputation, made outrageous claims in print and before the joint committee that moving the Third Corps to a forward position on July 2 had forced Meade to stay put, thereby saving the Union army from defeat. Stung by unwarranted attacks, Meade nevertheless retained his position as commander of the Army of the Potomac throughout the rest of the war. Changes in the Union command structure reduced his authority, however. In the spring of 1864, Lincoln selected Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to command all of the Northern armies. Grant chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, an uncomfortable arrangement for Meade but one that he accepted. Meade was the nominal commander of the Army of the Potomac at the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor and during the Petersburg campaign.
Following the war, Meade headed military departments in the East and South and, promoted to major general, was stationed in Philadelphia as commander of the Division of the Atlantic, where he died of pneumonia on November 6, 1872.
See also Gettysburg, Battle of.
Further reading: Freeman Cleaves, Meade of Gettysburg (Dayton, Ohio: Press of Morningside Books, 1980); George Gordon Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913).
—Amy J. Kinsel
World History
