132 



THE STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



known in our history as "Mason and Dixon's 

 Line," in 1760. A republican constitution was 

 adopted in 1776. The "Maryland Line" was 

 famous in the Revolutionary' War for its gal- 

 lantry. The Federal Constitution was adopted 

 in 1788. In the War of 1812, Maryland suffered 

 much from Admiral Cockburn's fleet; French- 

 town, Havre de Grace, and Frederick were 

 burned, and Fort McHenry unsuccessfully bom- 

 barded. The only important battle fought 

 within the State during the late Civil War was 

 that of Antietam, in September, 1862. 



Mason and Dixon's Line. This line 

 was originally the parallel of latitude 39 degrees, 

 43 minutes, 26.3 seconds which separates Penn- 

 sylvania from Maryland. It received its name 

 from Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two 

 English mathematicians and astronomers, who 

 traced the greater part of it between the years 

 1763 and 1767, though the last thirty-six miles 

 were finished by others. It was practically the j 

 dividing line between the free and the slave 

 States in the East. During the discussion in 

 Congress on the Missouri Compromise, John 

 Randolph, of Roanoke, Virginia, made free use 

 of the phrase, and thereafter it became popular 

 as signifying the dividing line between the free 

 and slave territory throughout the country. 

 The boundary, as thus extended by popular 

 usage, followed the Ohio River to the Mississippi, 

 and west of that was the parallel of 36 degrees, 

 30 minutes, the southern boundary of Missouri, 

 though Missouri itself was a slave State. 



Massachusetts was one of the thirteen 

 original States. Though first visited by the 

 English under Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602, 

 the first permanent settlement was made by the 

 Puritan colony, which landed from the "May- 

 flower" at Plymouth in 1620. The expedition 

 commanded by John Endicott, which arrived 

 in 1628, acting under the auspices of the Massa- 

 chusetts Bay Company, which had received a 

 royal charter, gradually planted settlements at 

 Charlestown, Boston, Watertown, Dorchester, 

 Roxbury, Salem, Mystic, Saugus (Lynn), and 

 other places. The restoration of the Stuarts 

 threatened the rights of the colonists, but their 

 charter was finally confirmed in 1662. King 

 Philip's War occurred in 1675-76, and put the 

 colonists in great peril. In 1684, the Massachu- 

 setts charter was declared forfeited to the Crown 

 under James II., but it was restored at the acces- 

 sion of William and Mary. In 1692, the colonies 

 of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth were con- 

 solidated. The province took active part in the 

 various French and Indian wars, and contrib- 

 uted largely to the expedition which captured 

 Louisburg in 1745. The Boston Massacre in 

 1770, the destruction of the tea in 1773, and the 

 Port Bill in 1774 were important incidents pre- 

 ceding the Revolution. At Lexington and Con- 

 cord, in 1775, Massachusetts made the final 

 appeal to arms. At this time the population of 

 the province was 352,000. The State Constitu- 

 tion, still essentially the organic law, was formed 

 in 1780, and the Federal Constitution was rati- 

 fied in 1788. The total expenditures of the 

 State on account of the late Civil War amounted 

 to $30,162,200. 



Mecklenburg Declaration. This dec- 



laration was adopted, it is said, in May, 177."), at 

 a midnight meeting of representatives of tin 1 

 militia of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. 

 It declares that the people of that county are, 

 free and independent of the British Crown, and 

 not only is its general tenor that of the Declara- 

 tion of Independence, but many phrases are 

 word for word as they appear in that document. 

 The minutes of the midnight meeting are said 

 to have been destroyed by fire in 1800. Whether 

 the Declaration of Independence followed the 

 words of the Mecklenburg Declaration or whether 

 the latter, having probably been replaced from 

 memory, was tinctured with the former, is a 

 disputed question. 



Mexico. The history of ancient Mexico 

 exhibits two distinct and widely differing peri- 

 ods that of the Toltecs and that of the Aztecs. 

 The Eighth Century is the traditional date when 

 the Toltecs are related to have come from the 

 North. Their capital was established at Tula, 

 north of the Mexican Valley. Their laws and 

 usages stamp them as a people of mild and 

 peaceful instincts, industrious, active, and enter- 

 prising. It is related that a severe famine and 

 pestilence all but destroyed the Toltec people in 

 the Eleventh Century, and near the end of the 

 next century, a fresh migration brought, among 

 other kindred nations, the Aztecs into the land. 

 Within two centuries and a half this last people 

 had become predominant. But their rule was, 

 in a great degree, a reversion to savagery. 



The Aztecs founded, about 1325, the city of 

 Tenochtitlan, or Mexico; a hundred years later 

 | they had extended their sway beyond their 

 plateau valley, and on the arrival of the Span- 

 iards, their empire was found to stretch from 

 ocean to ocean. Their government was an 

 elective empire, the deceased prince being 

 usually succeeded by a brother or nephew, who 

 I must be a tried warrior; but sometimes the 

 I successor was chosen from among the powerful 

 nobles. The monarch wielded despotic power, 

 save in the case of his great feudal vassals; 

 these exercised a very similar authority over 

 the peasant class, below whom, again, were the 

 slaves. The Mexicans apparently belie ved in 

 one supreme invisible creator of all things, the 

 ruler of the universe; but the popular faith was 

 i polytheistic. At the head of the Aztec pantheon 

 was the frightful Huitzilopochtli, the Mexican 

 Mars. The victims were borne to the summit 

 of the great pyramidal temples, where the 

 priests, in sight of assembled crowds, bound 

 them to the sacrificial stone, and, slashing open 

 the breast, tore from it the bleeding heart and 

 held it up before the image of the god. 



Cortez landed at Vera Cruz in 15 HJ. Before 

 his energy, and the superior civilization of his 

 followers, the power of the native empire crum- 

 bled away. In 1540 Mexico was united with 

 other American territories at one time all t he 

 country from Panama to Vancouver's Island 

 under the name of New Spain, and governed 

 b\ viceroys appointed by the "mother country. 

 The intolerant spirit of the Catholic clergy led 

 to the suppression of almost every trace of the 

 ancient Aztec nationality and civilization, while 

 the commercial system crippled the resources of 

 the colony; for all foreign trade with any coun- 



