MDDM "Another Slave-Colony"

[jbor]

Scott Badger at lupine at ncia.net wrote:

> 246.2 "This case, Uncle, languish'd in court for eighty years, yet just when
> Mason and Dixon happen to find themselves nicely between Transits of Venus,
> suddenly ev'ryone agrees there shall be a Survey in America. Aren't you at
> least suspicious?"
> 
> Funny, too, that the Line is finally commissioned just as the War for
> Independence is about to begin. A war woven through by the issue of
> slavery - tightly binding it to the Civil War, which, of course, was pitched
> across that same line.
> 
> Is Tenebrae fishing for red-herrings?
> 

Perhaps, but Wicks has been happy to slip hints of conspiracy into his tale
all along - without ever making it explicit whether or what the conspiracy
actually was - and does so again in the conversation he relates after his
response to Tenebrae's query here. The narrative has emphasised that both M
& D suspected an array of shenanigans going on behind their appointments and
various destinations, and I think that this has probably fuelled Tenebrae's
suspicions. Wicks plays the innocent, and teases 'Brae, but most certainly
he has been pulling on those strings I think.

I guess the 64 000 dollar question is whether or not there *were*
shenanigans at play in the sudden commissioning of M & D to map the Line.
That is, as far as the "historical record" is concerned.

best