Baltimore is the largest city in Maryland but not its capital city which is Annapolis. Maryland's unusual shape can be explained by its borders being delineated partly by geography and partly by the Mason-Dixon line. In the early 18th Century a dispute arose between the Penn family of Pennsylvania and the Calvert family of Maryland over the border between the two colonies and this dispute sparked a war in 1730. King George II negotiated a cease-fire in 1738 after which two English surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, delineated the official border. The Mason-Dixon line would become a symbolic dividing line between the North and the South during the American Civil War.
