confederate and Union (Yankee) tartans

[ForresterModern]

I always thought the Mason-Dixon line was an aid?

In any regard I think this is a pretty cool reckoning back to a different time:



"A "crownstone" boundary monument on the Mason-Dixon Line. These markers were originally placed at every 5th mile along the line, oriented with family coats of arms facing the state that they represented. The coat of arms of Maryland's founding Calvert family is shown. On the other side are the arms of William Penn." -Wikipedia

Interestingly, although the Mason-Dixon line represented portions of the Maryland-Pennsylvania border as described, it was indeed at least a reasonable descriptor of the North-South separation line in the east, as Maryland was a distinct slave-holding state with strong secessionist sympathies and more "South" than "North" economically, despite holding the District of Columbia, capital of the Union, along its southern border. Indeed, the Maryland legislature voted to support the rights of the seceded Confederate States to exist as such, while simultaneously voting to remain with the Union. Things remained very shaky on the potential for Maryland to secede from the time of Lincoln's election until Nov 1861 when, after a year of strong federal political maneuvering and arrests of "disunionist" thinkers, during the autumn Maryland legistlature elections, Union-sponsored guards were placed at prominent polling places in Maryland to arrest and/or discourage Democrats and other known or suspected "disunionists"/secessionists to keep them from voting, while simultaneously the Union Army specifically furloughed the Maryland units to come home to vote in the election (presumably for a new and more defined legislature that would keep Maryland in the Union). These factors effectively rigged the election in favor of the unionists so as to insure that the D of C and Union capital at Washington stayed within a defined Union state, despite being below the traditionally held Mason-Dixon line of separation between North and South. Fascinating history.