George Mason

The American statesman George Mason (1725-1792) wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and persistently advocated safeguarding the rights of individuals during the formative years of the republic.

George Mason was born in Virginia, son of a wealthy planter. He inherited several large estates along the Potomac River and became a friend and neighbor of George Washington. He married Ann Eilbeck in 1750 and soon was performing the tasks incumbent on a gentleman planter—justice of the peace, vestryman, and county delegate in the House of Burgesses. He speculated in land and became expert in colonial land law. In 1773 he became a widower with nine children. Despondent for months, he turned his attention to the growing Revolutionary crisis. A year later his Fairfax Resolves set the tone for Virginia's resistance to British domination.

Mason preferred to advise statesmen rather than be one. He served in the 1775 Virginia convention and so impressed fellow delegates that he was selected to the Continental Congress delegation. He declined to serve, as he steadfastly avoided higher offices in his reluctant role as a Revolutionary statesman.

At the 1776 Virginia convention Mason's drafts of the Declaration of Rights and the constitution emerged as models for other colonies turned states. Though ill, Mason was hardworking and helped write key legislation in the state assembly. Between 1776 and 1780 his bills for western land sales were designed to erase the public debt. In 1780 he outlined a plan which evolved into the western land cession act that eventually created the Northwest Territory.

Mason remarried and after the Revolution turned to his family and his fields. At the urging of friends he served at the Mount Vernon Convention of 1785 but avoided the Annapolis Convention. He went to the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, convinced that the Revolution and "the Formations of our new Governments at that time, were nothing compared to the great Business now before us". Though some of his suggestions in the Federal Constitutional Convention seemed to favor southern interests, his attack on slave importation showed that he could place humanitarianism beyond local concerns.

Many details in the approved Constitution, such as the mandatory origin of tax bills in the House, bore testimony to Mason's persistence. He refused to sign the Constitution, however, and worked indefatigably for its revision prior to a final ratification. He and Patrick Henry almost brought the ratification process to a standstill in Virginia, but after the Federal Bill of Rights was adopted, Mason conceded that with a few more alterations "I could chearfully put my hand & heart to the new government." He died at his plantation home, Gunston Hall, on Oct. 7, 1792.

Further Reading

The Papers of George Mason, 1725-1796 was edited by Robert A. Rutland (3 vols., 1970). There is no thorough study of Mason's life. The standard work is Kate Mason Rowland, The Life of George Mason (1892). Interpretive studies are Helen Hill [Miller], George Mason: Constitutionalist (1938), and Robert A. Rutland, George Mason: Reluctant Statesman (1961).

Additional Sources

Rutland, Robert Allen, George Mason and the War for Independence, Williamsburg, Va.: Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission, 1976.

Rutland, Robert Allen, George Mason, reluctant statesman, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980 1961. □

MASON, GEORGE

George Mason was an eighteenth-century statesperson who in 1776 wrote the Declaration of Rights for the State of Virginia and who later helped write the U.S. Constitution. Mason was a champion of liberty whose opposition to slavery and a strong federal government led him to refuse to sign the Constitution.

Mason was born on October 7, 1725, in Fairfax County, Virginia, the son of a wealthy commercial and agricultural family. Mason studied law but was primarily a plantation owner and real estate speculator. He was a neighbor of george washington. Mason was deeply interested in western expansion, and in 1749 he became a member of the Ohio Company, which developed land and trade on the upper Ohio River.

"Our all is at stake, and the little conveniences and comforts of life, when set in competition with our liberty, ought to be rejected not with reluctance but with pleasure."
—George Mason

At about this time, Mason helped found the city of Alexandria, Virginia. Because he suffered from chronic poor health, Mason avoided public office, serving only a short time in the Virginia

House of Burgesses. Yet he did not shun the political debate over British interference with the colonies. British attempts at taxing and controlling the colonies through the stamp act of 1765 and the townshend acts led many colonial leaders to consider political independence.

In 1775 Mason attended the Virginia convention, where he helped write most of the Virginia constitution. In June 1776 he wrote the virginia declaration of rights. thomas jefferson was probably familiar with Mason's concepts and language when he wrote the Declaration of Independence later that year, and other states soon copied Mason's work. French revolutionaries also showed they had been influenced by Mason's declaration in their Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was composed in 1789.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights stated that government derived from the people, that individuals were created equally free and independent, and that they had inalienable rights that the government could not legitimately deny them.

As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Mason was called on to write part of the first draft. By the end of the convention, however, he had become deeply alienated by the result. Although he came from a slaveholding state, Mason opposed slavery on both moral and economic grounds. He sought an end to the slave trade and the manumission of all slaves. Instead, the Constitution allowed the slave trade to continue for twenty years, and it said nothing about the institution of slavery.

Mason also objected to the lack of provision for individual rights, believing that the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government. His criticism contributed to the enactment and ratification of the bill of rights in 1791, portions of which were modeled on Mason's Declaration of Rights.

Mason died on October 7, 1792, at his estate in Fairfax County, Virginia.

further readings

Pacheco, Josephine F., ed. 1983. The Legacy of George Mason. Fairfax, Va.: George Mason Univ. Press.