Author ORCID Identifier
Semester
Spring
Date of Graduation
2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Type
PhD
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
History
Committee Chair
Brian Luskey
Committee Member
Jason Phillips
Committee Member
Austin McCoy
Committee Member
Max Flomen
Committee Member
Chandra Manning
Abstract
The Mason-Dixon Line, first surveyed between 1763 and 1767, became the symbolic “dividing line” between free and slave states in antebellum America. This perception of the Mason-Dixon Line allowed a larger borderland to grow around it: the Mason-Dixon Borderland, which consisted of northern Maryland, Washington, D.C., southern Pennsylvania, northern Virginia, and the Shenandoah Valley (western Virginia and the eastern panhandle of West Virginia).
Americans used slavery and freedom as referents to make decisions about survival, military policy, politics, and freedom-seeking during the Civil War. Those decisions had consequences for their movement across the Mason-Dixon Borderland, causing it to change as Black people’s freedom changed. This dissertation examines how perceptions of slavery and freedom transformed the Mason-Dixon Borderland without destroying it, setting the stage for a prolonged period of Reconstruction. It follows the movement of soldiers, freedom-seekers, and free people of color during intense periods of military activity: the Maryland Campaign (1862), the Gettysburg Campaign (1863), and Jubal Early’s Maryland Campaign (1864).
The trials free American Americans endured, often in the form of threatened kidnapping, depended, in part, on Confederate attitudes toward the Mason-Dixon Borderland—attitudes that were shaped both by the status of slavery in those states and the movement of enslaved people toward freedom. Although free and enslaved people had a shared interest in slavery’s demise, the movement of the latter often compromised the freedom of the former. The same disruptions that created freedom-seeking opportunities for enslaved people also created risks for free people of color, showing how their interests could diverge and their perceptions of slavery and freedom could differ.
Recommended Citation
Nicholas, Rachael B., "Forces of Movement: How Changing Perceptions of Slavery and Freedom Affected Black Lives in the Mason-Dixon Borderland, 1861-1872" (2026). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 13224.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/13224