Mason, George (1725-1792)

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George Mason (1725-1792)

Virginia revolutionary

Reluctant Statesman. George Mason was a private man devoted to his family and plantation, yet he was periodically called on by his community for advice and counsel. A slaveholder, Mason spent his public life attacking the institution of slavery, which violated his ideals of liberty and republican virtue. A leader in Virginia’s break with England, Mason drafted the state’s Declaration of Rights and called for a firm union of the states. In the 1780s Mason joined Washington and Madison in calling for a stronger union, and he helped draft the U.S. Constitution. Mason was horrified that the Constitution did not include a Bill of Rights and that it would allow the slave trade to continue for another twenty years. He opposed its ratification in 1788. The changes he proposed became the model for the Bill of Rights.

Family Life. When Mason was ten, his father, George Mason III, drowned in the Potomac. His mother, Ann Thomson Mason, managed the estate, instilling in her three children traits that became part of their character: an attention to detail, hard work, and the necessity to avoid extravagance and debt. Under Virginia law George, as oldest son, would inherit all of his father’s estate, so his mother shrewdly added to her own holdings to give his younger sister and brother an inheritance. George’s uncle, lawyer John Mercer, acted as a guardian to the Mason children, and in Mercer’s extensive library George Mason studied law and political philosophy. Though he never went to college, he became one of the best-educated men in the American colonies. In 1750 he married Anne Eilbeck, with whom he would have nine children who survived to adulthood. In 1758 the Masons commissioned English architect William Buckland to design their home, Gunston Hall, which became a showplace. A dozen miles away young George Washington had inherited his half-brother’s estate at Mount Vernon, and for the next forty years Mason and Washington would be close business partners and political allies. Mason managed his estate and attended to his family, reluctantly doing his civic duty as a parish vestryman and member of the colonial assembly. In 1772 Ann gave birth to twins who lived only a few hours; she never recovered from the difficult pregnancy, and she died in March 1773. In the crisis between England and the colonies Mason would play an important role, but his first duty was to his family.

The Fairfax Resolves. On 18 July 1774 the voters of Fairfax County elected George Washington and Maj. Charles Broadwater to the House of Burgesses, and Mason drew up the county’s instructions to their representatives. These instructions, the Fairfax Resolves, declared that Virginians enjoyed all the rights of Englishmen and that the “most important and valuable Part of the British Constitution” is the “fundamental Principle” that the people can not be made to obey laws “to which they have not given their Consent, by Representatives freely chosen by themselves.” The power to make laws governing the colonies could be exercised only by their own provincial assemblies. The Resolves called on all colonies to support Boston and urged every county in Virginia to send provisions to the town. While “our greatest Wish and Inclination” was to remain connected to the British government, the Virginians would “use every Means which Heaven hath given us to prevent our becoming it’s Slaves.” The Resolves asked the king not to reduce his subjects to desperation as “from our Sovereign there can be but one Appeal.” Mason’s Resolves called for a general boycott of British goods and for the colonists not to export any of their produce for sale in England until the crisis had been resolved. Mason chose not to be a candidate for the House of Burgesses or the Provincial Convention that replaced it. However, he remained active on his community’s Committee of Safety, and, in Washington’s absence, he chaired the Fairfax County Committee. In July 1775 Mason was elected to the Virginia Convention, and when Governor Dunmore fled the colony at the end of the year, Mason served on the committee of safety, which acted as the new executive power.

Declaration of Rights. James Madison called Mason the “master builder” of Virginia’s 1776 constitution, and as its author Mason had a profound influence on all subsequent written constitutions. Mason began the new state constitution with a Declaration of Rights. The declaration declared “That all Men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they cannot by any Compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing and obtaining Happiness and Safety.” The Declaration of Rights went on to guarantee protection of property, trial by jury, the right of the accused to face his accusers, religious toleration, freedom of the press, and separation of powers in government. This declaration was a model for Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, for other state constitutions, for France’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, and for the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Slavery and Liberty. The Virginia convention made one crucial change in Mason’s declaration. Mason, and most of Virginia’s political leaders, owned slaves. How could they declare that all men were born free and that they could not divest their posterity of liberty? What about slaves? Were they to be free? Robert Carter Nicholas warned that Mason’s declaration would create “civil convulsion,” and the convention amended the draft to say that men were “by nature” free, and that once they entered “into a state of society” they could not divest their posterity of liberty. This permitted the white men in the state to continue holding slaves. The tortured reasoning here had a profound result. The 1780 Massachusetts constitution began with a statement exactly like Mason’s original draft. A Boston slave named Quok Walker sued for his freedom, arguing that this constitution prohibited slavery, and the Massachusetts courts agreed. Had Virginia’s convention not amended Mason’s draft, his constitution also might have ended slavery, a result he would have applauded. Mason regarded slavery as an evil that weakened society; he urged Virginia to stop importing slaves and blamed England for extending the slave trade. Mason called for gradual emancipation and for educating the freed people so they could become independent members of society.

Devoted Republican. Having launched an era of constitution writing, Mason retired to his family and plantation. In 1780 Mason married Sarah Brent, a fifty-year old spinster. In 1785 he participated in the Mount Vernon conference, and though he was chosen as a delegate to the Annapolis conference the next year, he did not go. He was elected to the legislature in 1785, over his objections, and in 1787 he represented Virginia in the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. Mason was an active delegate, and years later Madison recalled Mason at Philadelphia as a “powerful Reasoner, a profound Statesman and a devoted Republican.” At the end, though, Mason refused to sign the constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights and permitted the slave trade to continue until 1808. He left Philadelphia, Madison said, “in a very ill humor,” returning home to oppose ratification. Mason failed to prevent his state from ratifying, but his opposition pushed Madison and the Federalists to propose a Bill of Rights.

Retirement. Mason had a profound influence on the public affairs of his day, and Virginia’s Declaration of Rights that he drafted continues to be the basis for written constitutional guarantees of liberty. Though Mason left home reluctantly, his letters to Washington, Jefferson, and other men gave him great influence until his death on 7 October 1792.