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. AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 97 Dixie and the Lost Cause 97After Lee s surrender at Appomattox in 1865, the Mason-Dixon Line should have been drained of its power and legiti-macy as a boundary.Technically, the Union was whole andwithout sectional division.If the proponents of the New Southhad gained control over the development that took place duringthe postwar years, the Mason-Dixon Line certainly would haveslipped into historical insignificance and obscurity by the earlytwentieth century.The myth of the Lost Cause, however,breathed new life into the old line and allowed the compoundword Mason-Dixon to reenter the Southern lexicon as a cul-tural point of reference for a mythical place called Dixie. AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 9810Binding theWoundThe Mason-Dixon Line Today AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 99Binding the Wound: The Mason-Dixon Line Today 99braham Lincoln s brief address at Gettysburg, according toAGarry Wills, should be read as a stunning verbal coup. 78Doubtless, the speech given that November day by an exhaustedand troubled president contained words that remade America, as the title of Wills s book claims.The transformation he alludesto, however, went far beyond revised definitions of what it meantto be an American, and began not on the occasion of a cemeterydedication but during a celebratory speech marking electoralvictory.One year after his visit to Pennsylvania, Lincoln ran forand won reelection.In his inaugural address, the presidentexhorted his countrymen to put away the sectional animositiesthat had cost the country so much blood.Lincoln challenged hislisteners to build a new American ideal based on commonalityrather than difference.He set before his audience the task ofreconstructing the battered republic with malice toward none and implored them to strive on to finish the work we are in, tobind up the nation s wounds. 79The arduous process of making the United States wholeagain entailed the obliteration, both as a concept and as a func-tioning social device, of dividing lines exemplified by the Mason-Dixon Line.The Mason-Dixon Line epitomized antagonism,suspicion, and separation.It began as a mere colonial border butcame to symbolize the divergent social, cultural, and economicpaths taken by developing America.The line represented a bar-gaining chip in the ultimately unsuccessful quest for compromisebetween freedom and slavery, and it was erased by the crisis thatensued.Its legacy took center stage during the Civil War.Later itfed a myth created to cushion the blows of that war s aftermathin the South.The Mason-Dixon Line indeed had a long andtumultuous existence punctuated by discord and violence.Today,however, the Mason-Dixon Line is fading into insignificance, itsexistence noted in the pages of high school textbooks and seen ina string of barely legible stone markers, tilting this way and thatin out-of-the-way places along the border between Pennsylvaniaand Maryland.The Mason-Dixon Line, like all artifacts of humansociety and culture, is dissolving in the acid bath of history. AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 100100 THE MASON-DIXON LINEThe changes that came over American society in the wake ofWorld War II hastened the demise of the Mason-Dixon Line.The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s forcedNortherners and Southerners alike to confront the legacy ofslavery.Men such as Martin Luther King, Jr., helped shatter theLost Cause myth by taking the country across the Mason-DixonLine to see firsthand the corrupt, repressive, and backward worldthe line defined and epitomized.The Old South and its racistinstitutions could hide no more.Television and other forms ofmodern communication neither recognized nor respected imag-inary lines.The prying eye of the television camera could not bekept from penetrating the darkest recesses of Southern societyand culture.Across the land, Americans watched as the angerand hate implicit in the Lost Cause poured out onto the heads ofcivil rights advocates.They saw fire hoses and dogs turned looseon innocent people; they witnessed beatings and burnings.Inthis sense, technology transcended the Mason-Dixon Line inways previously impossible.It continues to do so today.Modern America affords little space to quaint relics of thepast, such as the Mason-Dixon Line.The world it helped delin-eate and define is gone.North and South no longer exist as polarextremes of social and cultural development.Time itself has cre-ated a new American context, a web of relationships that hasrendered the very idea of a separate North and South meaning-less, but it has done so through a blend of communication tech-nology and economics; this particular blend has generatedcentripetal forces that are pulling people and places togetherrather than pushing them apart [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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. AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 97 Dixie and the Lost Cause 97After Lee s surrender at Appomattox in 1865, the Mason-Dixon Line should have been drained of its power and legiti-macy as a boundary.Technically, the Union was whole andwithout sectional division.If the proponents of the New Southhad gained control over the development that took place duringthe postwar years, the Mason-Dixon Line certainly would haveslipped into historical insignificance and obscurity by the earlytwentieth century.The myth of the Lost Cause, however,breathed new life into the old line and allowed the compoundword Mason-Dixon to reenter the Southern lexicon as a cul-tural point of reference for a mythical place called Dixie. AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 9810Binding theWoundThe Mason-Dixon Line Today AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 99Binding the Wound: The Mason-Dixon Line Today 99braham Lincoln s brief address at Gettysburg, according toAGarry Wills, should be read as a stunning verbal coup. 78Doubtless, the speech given that November day by an exhaustedand troubled president contained words that remade America, as the title of Wills s book claims.The transformation he alludesto, however, went far beyond revised definitions of what it meantto be an American, and began not on the occasion of a cemeterydedication but during a celebratory speech marking electoralvictory.One year after his visit to Pennsylvania, Lincoln ran forand won reelection.In his inaugural address, the presidentexhorted his countrymen to put away the sectional animositiesthat had cost the country so much blood.Lincoln challenged hislisteners to build a new American ideal based on commonalityrather than difference.He set before his audience the task ofreconstructing the battered republic with malice toward none and implored them to strive on to finish the work we are in, tobind up the nation s wounds. 79The arduous process of making the United States wholeagain entailed the obliteration, both as a concept and as a func-tioning social device, of dividing lines exemplified by the Mason-Dixon Line.The Mason-Dixon Line epitomized antagonism,suspicion, and separation.It began as a mere colonial border butcame to symbolize the divergent social, cultural, and economicpaths taken by developing America.The line represented a bar-gaining chip in the ultimately unsuccessful quest for compromisebetween freedom and slavery, and it was erased by the crisis thatensued.Its legacy took center stage during the Civil War.Later itfed a myth created to cushion the blows of that war s aftermathin the South.The Mason-Dixon Line indeed had a long andtumultuous existence punctuated by discord and violence.Today,however, the Mason-Dixon Line is fading into insignificance, itsexistence noted in the pages of high school textbooks and seen ina string of barely legible stone markers, tilting this way and thatin out-of-the-way places along the border between Pennsylvaniaand Maryland.The Mason-Dixon Line, like all artifacts of humansociety and culture, is dissolving in the acid bath of history. AB-MASON-DIXON-Interior 12/15/03 8:53 PM Page 100100 THE MASON-DIXON LINEThe changes that came over American society in the wake ofWorld War II hastened the demise of the Mason-Dixon Line.The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s forcedNortherners and Southerners alike to confront the legacy ofslavery.Men such as Martin Luther King, Jr., helped shatter theLost Cause myth by taking the country across the Mason-DixonLine to see firsthand the corrupt, repressive, and backward worldthe line defined and epitomized.The Old South and its racistinstitutions could hide no more.Television and other forms ofmodern communication neither recognized nor respected imag-inary lines.The prying eye of the television camera could not bekept from penetrating the darkest recesses of Southern societyand culture.Across the land, Americans watched as the angerand hate implicit in the Lost Cause poured out onto the heads ofcivil rights advocates.They saw fire hoses and dogs turned looseon innocent people; they witnessed beatings and burnings.Inthis sense, technology transcended the Mason-Dixon Line inways previously impossible.It continues to do so today.Modern America affords little space to quaint relics of thepast, such as the Mason-Dixon Line.The world it helped delin-eate and define is gone.North and South no longer exist as polarextremes of social and cultural development.Time itself has cre-ated a new American context, a web of relationships that hasrendered the very idea of a separate North and South meaning-less, but it has done so through a blend of communication tech-nology and economics; this particular blend has generatedcentripetal forces that are pulling people and places togetherrather than pushing them apart [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]