George Mason was Revolutionary statesman, and constitutionalist, was the fourth of his name and line in Virginia.
Background
The first American George Mason, who probably emigrated from England soon after the battle of Worcester, settled in the Northern Neck on 900 acres near Pasbytanzy; he and his descendants added to this original grant so that when the fourth George Mason came of age and settled at Dogue's Neck, on the Potomac below Alexandria, he controlled some 5, 000 acres in the region. Because of the death of his father, the third George Mason, when he was ten, the boy grew up under the guardianship of his mother, Ann (Thomson) Mason, and his uncle by marriage, John Mercer of "Marlborough, " an exceptionally able lawyer.
Education
Mrs. Mason's account books show payments to private tutors during the years 1736-39, but Mason found his education in Mercer's library.
Career
It numbered upwards of 1, 500 volumes, a third of them on law, and at the time of his guardianship Mercer was at work among them. This association accounts for the fact that while Mason was never licensed as an attorney he was called in as a notably competent counsel on questions of public law throughout his later life. Mason persisted in regarding himself as a private gentleman, even during his most intensive periods of public service. Without the aid of a steward, he personally managed his large and practically self-sufficient plantation. He served as trustee of the recently founded town of Alexandria from 1754 until its incorporation in 1779; Alexandria was also the seat of Fairfax County, and he was one of the gentlemen justices of the county court from his early manhood until his resignation in 1789. Parallel to the jurisdiction of the county ran that of the parish, which under the Establishment was vested with governmental duties in respect of the moral and charitable obligations of the community; Mason was a vestryman of Truro Parish from 1748 until 1785, serving as one of the overseers of the poor after relief became a lay function. As the executor of Daniel French, the original contractor, he supervised the building of Pohick Church, some of whose details repeat the carvings at "Gunston. " This triple experience in local government formed an important part of his political apprenticeship. Complementary to Mason's familiarity with the tidewater section of the colony was his association with the problems of the West. He became a member of the Ohio Company in 1752, and served as its treasurer until 1773. His initial interest in it was merely as a speculation, but as the company changed from a private economic venture into the lever which upset the political balance, first between French and British forces in the New World, and then, after the Peace of Paris, between Crown and Colony across the Alleghanies, the constitutional aspect of Virginia's claims to the Northwest Territory engaged his attention; when the Crown, in 1773, abrogated the Ohio Company's rights and regranted the area they covered to the Grand Company organized by a group of Pennsylvanians, Mason produced his first major state paper, Extracts from the Virginia Charters, with Some Remarks upon Them. Prior to midsummer, 1775, Mason's part in the Revolution was in the wings of the public stage. Various reasons have been adduced for his reluctance to accept office; on the one hand his chronic ill-health, on the other the death of his wife early in 1773, leaving him, as he wrote in 1775, with a sense of "the duty I owe to a poor little helpless family of orphans to whom I must now act the part of Father and Mother both". It is true that after his marriage, on April 11, 1780, to Sarah Brent he accepted a seat in the Federal Convention in Philadelphia (1787), but by far the most probable cause of his persistent refusals to serve was the low rating which he put upon human nature in committee. In 1759 he and Washington had served together in the House of Burgesses; at the end of his first term he withdrew with an opinion of that body which did not change when he went to take the place of the newly-elected Commander-in-chief in the July convention of 1775. Writing Washington on October 14, 1775, in regard to the session he said: "I never was in so disagreeable a situation and almost despaired of a cause which I saw so ill conducted. Mere vexation and disgust threw me into such an ill state of health, that before the Convention rose, I was sometimes near fainting in the House. However, after some weeks the babblers were pretty well silenced, a few weighty members began to take the lead, several wholesome regulations were made". His open letter of June 6, 1766, to a committee of London merchants He was behind none of the sons of Virginia in knowledge of her history and interest. At a glance he saw to the bottom of every proposition which affected her" tersely summarized the mood of the colonists in its balanced profession of loyalty and independence: they were ready wholeheartedly to welcome the repeal of the Stamp Act as an act of justice; that repeal was a favor they would never admit. When the Townshend duties revived the trade dispute, Mason prepared the resolutions which Washington presented to the dissolved House of Burgesses and which, adopted by them as a non-importation association, were passed on for subsequent approval by the Continental Congress. After the Boston Port Act brought matters to a head, he wrote the Fairfax Resolves of July 18, 1774, stating a version of the constitutional position of the colonies of the Crown which was successively accepted by the county court in Fairfax, the Virginia convention in Williamsburg, and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia; some weeks later his plan for the organization of troops led to the creation of the Fairfax Independent Company of volunteers. During the period in which he was writing these important papers, Mason was exerting a parallel influence on the consolidation of public opinion by word of mouth. Philip Mazzei, in his memoirs, and Edmund Randolph, in his manuscript history of Virginia, both emphasize this aspect of his effectiveness. Washington's diary bears witness to the frequency of his collaboration with Mason in the years before his departure to lead the army, and the letters of the three younger colleagues who succeeded him as the Virginia dynasty all testify specifically to the influence upon them of conversations at "Gunston Hall. " In 1775 Mason emerged from retirement as a member of the July convention, and served on the committee of safety which took over the executive powers vacated by the flight of Governor Dunmore. In 1776, as a member of the May convention, he achieved his outstanding contribution as a constitutionalist by framing the Declaration of Rights and the major part of the constitution of Virginia. The former was drawn upon by Jefferson in the first part of the Declaration of Independence, was widely copied in the other colonies, became the basis for the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and had a considerable influence in France at the time of the French Revolution. The latter was notable as a pioneer, written "constitution, " prepared with a view to permanence, and used by a commonwealth over a period of years. The years 1776-80 were occupied in implementing the various provisions of the two documents, with Mason in the forefront of legislative activity, closely collaborating with such men as Jefferson, Henry, and Wythe. He was a member of the committee of five entrusted with the revision of the laws, and while he resigned after the general plan had been agreed on, he continued to contribute his share of the new drafts, particularly those relating to the western lands. He was among the liberal churchmen who effected disestablishment. He was active in the organization of military affairs, particularly in the West. Mason's connection with the Northwest Territory is worthy of special note. His relation to George Rogers Clark was as close as that of father to son; he was one of Governor Henry's secret committee that authorized Clark's conquest, and it was to him that Clark sent his full account of the campaign. Since it was his Extracts from the Virginia Charters that had convinced Virginians of the western extent of their sovereignty, he was in some measure responsible for the fixing of the British-American boundary, in the treaty of 1783, at the Great Lakes rather than the Ohio, and it was he who sketched the plan out of which grew the cession by Virginia of her western lands to the United States, and Jefferson's ordinance for their government. During the early eighties Mason was among those whom disgust at the conduct of public affairs drove into retirement; not until 1786 could he be again prevailed upon to go to the Assembly. His return to active life was motivated by his desire to prevent Virginia from indulging in a further orgy of inflation, and his growing conviction, in spite of his lifelong attachment to doctrine of state rights, that the Articles of Confederation were an inadequate basis for the central government. He was an active member of the Virginia delegation at the Mount Vernon meeting of 1785; he was appointed to but did not attend the Annapolis meeting of 1786 which grew out of it; in the debates at Philadelphia he was one of the five most frequent speakers. An examination of Madison's notes on the Federal Convention shows the extent of the constructive influence which Mason exerted on the Constitution. His decision not to sign the document was made during the last two weeks; until the final days of the convention he struggled for the inclusion of certain clauses and the exclusion of others which he regarded as respectively essential and iniquitous. In several instances his "Objections to the Federal Constitution", on the basis of which he conducted his campaign against ratification in the Virginia convention of 1788, though negative in their immediate application, proved in the long run to have been well-founded. In two cases, his justification is written into the Constitution. His insistence on the necessity of a Bill of Rights bore fruit in the first ten amendments. The eleventh amendment, in 1798, testified to the correctness of his strictures on one part of the judiciary article, when his prophecy that suits would be brought against states was ridiculed by a young lawyer named John Marshall. In a third case his justification is written into general American history. Mason's outstanding reason for refusing to sign the Constitution was that it incorporated the compromise between the New England states and those of the extreme South on the tariff and the slave trade. His opposition to the institution of slavery was perhaps the most consistent feature of his public career. His first political paper opens with a paragraph on the advantage of settling land with free as contrasted with slave labor; his final speeches in the Richmond convention reiterate his opinion that "such a trade is diabolical in itself and disgraceful to mankind. "Mason's constructive proposals for the situation in which a century and a half of slave owning had left his community, proposals which run curiously parallel to the solution of the problem effected by the British Parliament in 1833, can be taken as illustrative of his general philosophical attitude.
Achievements
Influential American Patriot who helped gain support for the American Revolution and helped write the Constitution of the United States. Mason had played a highly important part ever since 1765, when, at the instance of Washington and G. W. Fairfax, he contrived a method of replevying goods under distress for rent without the use of stamped paper.
(Complete three-volume set of the papers of George Mason, ...)
Views
More than perhaps any other American statesman of the period, he represented the rationalist spirit, the Enlightenment in its American manifestation. He believed in the existence of a rule of right reason, and in the possibility of giving it concretion in terms of the problem at hand. He believed life, liberty, and the use of property to be central human rights. Applying those criteria to slavery, he favored manumission, so that one man's life should not be at the mercy of another, preceded by education, so that liberty might be given a positive content; at the same time he desired recognition of the property rights of the owner, so that the termination of an undesirable economy might take place without the confiscation of a large part of the community's capital. His conclusions were thorough, impersonal, convinced. They may stand as indicative of the mental fiber of Mason the gentleman, the representative of the Enlightenment, and the statesman. He believed in the separation of church and state, and was a strong proponent of individual rights over the power of the government. He favored popular elections of government officials, unrestricted admission of new western states, and a three-part government. Although a slaveholder, he was appalled by the institution, feeling that "every slave master is born a petty tyrant. " He favored abolition of slavery, as soon as economically feasible, and supported a halt to future importation of slaves into America.
Quotations:
"That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in assembly, ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage, and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses, without their own consent, or that of their representives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assembled, for the public good. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Among the numbers who in their small circles were propagating with activity the American doctrines, was George Mason in the shade of retirement. He extended their grasp upon the opinions and affections of those with whom he conversed. He was behind none of the sons of Virginia in knowledge of her history and interest. At a glance he saw to the bottom of every proposition which affected her. "
Connections
On April 4, 1750, he married Anne Eilbeck of "Mattawoman, " Charles County, Maryland. In the course of the twenty years after their marriage, five sons and four daughters were born.
Father:
George Mason, III
1690 - 5 March 1735
Was an early American planter, businessman, and statesman.
Mother:
Ann Thomson Mason
1699 - 1762
Brother:
Thomson Mason
14 August 1733 - 26 February 1785
son :
William Mason
22 October 1757 – 7 February 1818
Was a militiaman in the American Revolutionary War and a prominent Virginia planter.
Wife:
Anna Eilbeck Mason
1734 - 9 March 1773
Daughter:
Sarah Eilbeck Mason McCarty
11 December 1760 - 11 September 1823
Daughter:
Ann Eilbeck Mason Johnson
Son:
Richard Mason
Son:
Thomson Mason
4 March 1759 – 11 March 1820
Was a prominent entrepreneur, planter, civil servant, and justice.
Son:
John Mason
4 April 1766 - 19 March 1849
Was an early American merchant, banker, officer (armed forces), and planter.
Son:
Thomas Mason
May 1, 1770 – September 18, 1800
Was an early American businessman, planter, and politician.
Son:
George Mason, V
1753 - 1796
Was a planter, businessman, and militia leader.
