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.

For more information on George Mason, visit Britannica.com.

(1725-1792), Virginia planter and political leader during the revolutionary era. Born and reared in the genteel plantation society that produced a generation of extraordinary leaders, Mason was unique in preferring public duties that did not bring the fame and glory sought by many of his contemporaries. From Gunston Hall in Fairfax County, Virginia, Mason watched the crisis between the North American colonies and Britain become critical, and he helped his neighbor, George Washington, prepare the influential Fairfax Resolves of July 1774. The resolves, carried by Washington to the Virginia House of Burgesses, clearly asserted colonial rights, called for an economic boycott of English goods, and denounced the slave trade, demanding an end "to such a wicked cruel and unnatural Trade." The resolves helped cement a close alliance among Mason, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Washington, and other leading Virginians, as the tensions between the colonies and England escalated.

After April 1775 Mason was drawn into the vortex of the resistance movement in Virginia. He refused to take a place on the Virginia delegation to the Continental Congress but was active on the county Committee of Safety (procuring weapons for the militia) and replaced Washington on the county delegation elected to the Virginia Convention. Widowed in 1773, Mason carried on extensive tobacco cultivation at Gunston Hall while attending to his nine children's upbringing. He was saddened when the break with England made his participation on revolutionary councils urgent.

In May 1776 the Virginia Convention took the first step in severing the colony from the British Empire, and Mason's plans for a declaration of rights and a constitution "swallowed up all the rest." Printed in a Williamsburg newspaper and widely circulated, Mason's stirring rhetoric and systematic catalog of human rights, prefaced by an affirmation of every freeman's right to "life and liberty ... and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety," had an electrifying effect on other state assemblies. Thereafter, as most states cut the bonds with England they adopted similar declarations, often borrowing Mason's articles verbatim.

Mason continued to avoid public service outside Virginia, but he was active in the state legislature, and his intellectual grasp of political problems won the admiration of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Mason threw his support behind Jefferson's bill establishing religious freedom, which became law in 1786.

When the crisis in national affairs came to a head in 1786, Mason set aside his reservations and agreed to serve on the Virginia delegation at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention of 1787. He was one of the most active speakers and consistently advocated liberal provisions for national elections, safeguards for majority rule, and limitations on presidential power. Mason urged schemes to give states power in the Senate and to control their exports, but was disappointed when his suggestion for a bill of rights was voted down.

Somewhat embittered by this rejection, Mason was one of three delegates at Philadelphia who refused to sign the finished Constitution on September 17, 1787. He wrote a critique of it that appeared in pamphlet form as his "Objections." His first sentence--"There is no Declaration of Rights"--became a rallying point for the Antifederalist opposition to the ratification of the Constitution. In June 1788 Mason served at the Virginia ratifying convention but was bested in the debate by Madison. He would not back down, however, calling even in defeat for a bill of rights in the Constitution--a concession finally made after a close vote (89 to 79).

With the new government in operation, Mason found that his opposition had somewhat alienated his old friend Washington. But he maintained his relationships with Jefferson and Madison, and the latter introduced the set of ten amendments that became part of the Constitution in December 1791. Mason then let his wartime associates know he was ready to "chearfully put my Hand & Heart to the new Government." He refused a proffered seat in the Senate, however, falling back on his old excuses of ill health (he suffered from gout) and family matters. Jefferson visited him on September 30, 1792, and they talked of political matters past and future in friendly fashion. A week later, Mason was dead.

Bibliography:

Helen Hill Miller, George Mason: Gentleman Revolutionary (1975); Robert A. Rutland, George Mason: Reluctant Statesman (1980).

Author:

Robert Allen Rutland

See also Bill of Rights; Constitution; Philadelphia Convention; Ratification of the Constitution; Revolution.

1725–92, American political leader, b. Fairfax co., Va. He was one of the most affluent of the colonial Virginia planters. In his triple capacity as trustee of Alexandria (1754–79), justice of the Fairfax county court, and vestryman of Truro parish, Mason exercised great influence in local politics. In 1752 he became a member of the Ohio Company (serving as treasurer until 1773), and in 1759 he was elected to the Virginia house of burgesses. An early opponent of British colonial policy, he drafted the nonimportation resolutions adopted (1769) by the burgesses against the British and also wrote (1774) the Fairfax Resolves, which restated the constitutional position of the colonies in relation to the crown. Mason served on the Virginia committee of safety, and as a member of the Virginia constitutional convention of 1776 he drafted the well-known declaration of rights, which was extensively copied by other American states, and which was drawn on by Thomas Jefferson in the first part of the Declaration of Independence. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia (1787) and took an active part in drafting the Constitution; however, he objected to provisions for the centralization of power, the compromise between the New England and the Southern states on the tariff and slave trade issues, and the failure to include a bill of rights. Mason refused to sign the Constitution, and with Patrick Henry he led the fight in Virginia against its ratification; the bill of rights he advocated was the basis for some of the first 10 amendments (the Bill of Rights) to the Constitution.

Bibliography

See his papers, ed. by R. A. Rutland (3 vol., 1970); biographies by K. M. Rowland (1892, repr. 1964), R. A. Rutland (1961, repr. 1963), and F. Henri (1971).

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.

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 VirginiaDeclaration 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.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

J Mason	mason boots
Mason Pearson	mason pearson