George Mason (October 7, 1792) was an American planter, politician, Founding Father, and delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, one of three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution. His writings, including substantial portions of the Fairfax Resolves of 1774, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, and his Objections to this Constitution of Government (1787) opposing ratification, have exercised a significant influence on American political thought and events. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Mason principally authored, served as a basis for the United States Bill of Rights, of which he has been deemed a father.

Mason was born in 1725 in present-day Fairfax County, Virginia. His father drowned while crossing the Potomac River in 1735 when Mason was nine years old. His mother managed the family estates until he came of age. Mason married in 1750, built Gunston Hall, and lived the life of a country squire, supervising his lands, family, and slaves. He briefly served in the House of Burgesses and involved himself in community affairs, sometimes serving with his neighbor George Washington. As tensions grew between Great Britain and the North American colonies, Mason came to support the colonial side, using his knowledge and experience to help the revolutionary cause, finding ways to work around the Stamp Act 1765 and serving in the pro-independence Fourth Virginia Convention in 1775 and the Fifth Virginia Convention in 1776.

Mason prepared the first draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, and his words formed much of the text adopted by the final Revolutionary Virginia Convention. He also wrote a constitution for the state; Thomas Jefferson and others sought to have the convention adopt their ideas, but Mason's version was nonetheless adopted. During the American Revolutionary War, Mason was a member of the powerful House of Delegates of the Virginia General Assembly, but to the irritation of Washington and others, he refused to serve in the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, citing health and family commitments.

In 1787, Mason was named one of his state's delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, his only lengthy trip outside Virginia. Many clauses in the Constitution were influenced by Mason's input, but he ultimately did not sign the final version, citing the lack of a bill of rights among his most prominent objections. He also wanted an immediate end to the slave trade and a supermajority requirement for navigation acts, fearing that restrictions on shipping might harm Virginia. He failed to attain these objectives in Philadelphia and later at the Virginia Ratifying Convention of 1788. His prominent fight for a bill of rights led fellow Virginian James Madison to introduce the same during the First Congress in 1789; these amendments were ratified in 1791, a year before Mason died. Obscure after his death, Mason later came to be recognized in the 20th and 21st centuries for his contributions to Virginia and the early United States.

Early life and education

thumb|George Mason's [[coat of arms]]

Mason was born in present-day Fairfax County, in the Colony of Virginia, in British America, on December 11, 1725. Mason's parents owned property in Dogue's Neck (now Mason Neck), Virginia, and a second property across the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland, which had been inherited by his mother. He took a position among the officers of the Fairfax County militia, eventually rising to the rank of colonel.

The county court heard civil and criminal cases, and also decided matters such as local taxes. Membership fell to most major landowners. Mason was a justice for much of the rest of his life, though he was excluded because of nonattendance at court from 1752 to 1764, and he resigned in 1789 when continued service meant swearing to uphold a constitution he could not support. Even while a member, he often did not attend. Joseph Horrell, in a journal article on Mason's court service, noted that he was often in poor health and lived the furthest of any of the major estateholders from the Fairfax County courthouse, whether at its original site near today's Tyson's Corner or later in newly founded Alexandria. Robert Rutland, editor of Mason's papers, considered court service a major influence on Mason's later thinking and writing, but Horrell denied it, writing that "if the Fairfax court provided a course for Mason's early training, he chiefly distinguished himself by skipping classes."

Alexandria was one of the towns founded or given corporate status in the mid-18th century in which Mason had interests; he purchased three of the original lots along King and Royal Streets and became a municipal trustee in 1754. He also served as a trustee of Dumfries, in Prince William County, and had business interests there and in Georgetown, on the Maryland side of the Potomac River in present-day Washington, D.C.

In 1748, he sought a seat in the House of Burgesses; the process was controlled by more senior members of the court and he was not then successful, but he later emerged victorious in 1758.

Gunston Hall

thumb|Portrait of Mason's wife, Ann Eilbeck, with whom he had nine children. By Dominic Boudet in 1811, a copy of the destroyed original by [[John Hesselius.]]

thumb|A 1958 postage stamp featuring [[Gunston Hall, Mason's residence in Fairfax County, Virginia]]

thumb|alt=Chamber of House of Burgesses|The House of Burgesses in [[Williamsburg, Virginia, where Mason served as a delegate from 1758 to 1761]]

On April 4, 1750, Mason married Ann Eilbeck, only child of William and Sarah Eilbeck of Charles County, Maryland. The Masons and Eilbecks had adjacent lands in Maryland and had joined in real estate transactions; by his death in 1764, William Eilbeck was one of the wealthiest men in Charles County. At the time of his marriage, Mason was living at Dogue's Neck, possibly at Sycamore Point. George and Ann Mason had nine children who survived to adulthood. Ann Mason died in 1773; their marriage, judging by surviving accounts, was a happy one.

Mason began to build his home, Gunston Hall, in or around 1755. The exterior, typical of local buildings of that time, was probably based on architectural books sent from Britain to America for the use of local builders; one of these craftsmen, perhaps William Waite or James Wren, constructed Gunston Hall. Mason was proud of the gardens, which still surround the house. There were outbuildings, including slave quarters, a schoolhouse, and kitchens, and beyond them four large plantations, forests, and the shops and other facilities that made Gunston Hall mostly self-sufficient.

Mason avoided overdependence on tobacco as a source of income by leasing much of his land holdings to tenant farmers, and he diversified his crops to grow wheat for export to the British West Indies as Virginia's economy sank because of tobacco overproduction in the 1760s and 1770s. Mason was a pioneer in the Virginia wine industry. Along with Thomas Jefferson, Mason and other Virginians subscribed to a scheme for growing wine grapes in America developed by Filippo Mazzei.

Mason greatly ultimately expanded the boundaries of Gunston Hall estate, so that it occupied all of Dogue's Neck, which became known as Mason's Neck. One project that Mason was involved in for most of his adult life was the Ohio Company, in which he invested in 1749 and became treasurer in 1752—an office he held forty years until his death in 1792. The Ohio Company had secured a royal grant for to be surveyed near the forks of the Ohio River in present-day Pittsburgh. The challenges of the French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, and competing claims from the Province of Pennsylvania eventually led to the collapse of the Ohio Company. Although the company failed, Mason acquired considerable western lands independently. His defense against the Pennsylvania claims, Selections from the Virginia Charters, written in 1772, originally intended to promote the Ohio Company's claims, was widely applauded as a defense of the rights of Americans against royal decrees.

Involvement with the Ohio Company also brought Mason into contact with many prominent Virginians, including George Washington, his Fairfax County neighbor. Mason and George Washington were friends for many years until they finally broke over their differences regarding the federal constitution. Peter R. Henriques, in a journal article on the relationship between Mason and Washington, suggests that Mason cultivated the friendship more than Washington. Mason sent many more letters and gifts and stayed more often at Washington's residence at Mount Vernon, though this might be explained in part by the fact that Mount Vernon was located on the road from Gunston Hall to Alexandria. Henriques suggests that as Mason was older, intellectually superior, and the owner of a flourishing plantation as Washington was struggling to establish Mount Vernon, it would not have been in the future president's character to seek a close relationship with Mason. Washington, however, had deep respect for Mason's intellectual abilities, and sought Mason's advice on several occasions, writing in 1777 when learning that Mason had taken charge of an issue before the General Assembly, "I know of no person better qualified ... than Colonel Mason, and shall be very happy to hear he has taken it in hand".

Despite his involvement in western real estate, Mason saw that land was being cleared and planted with tobacco faster than the market for it could expand, meaning that its price would drop even as more and more capital was tied up in land and slaves. Thus, although a major slaveholder, he opposed the slave system in Virginia. He believed that slave importation, together with the natural population increase, would result in a huge future slave population in Virginia; a system of leased lands, though not as profitable as slave labor, would have "little Trouble & Risque [risk]".

Virginia House of Burgesses

Little is known of Mason's political views prior to the 1760s, when he came to oppose British colonial policies. In 1758, Mason successfully ran for the House of Burgesses when George William Fairfax, holder of one of Fairfax County's two seats, chose not to seek reelection. Also elected were Mason's brother Thomson for Stafford County, George Washington for Frederick County, where he was stationed as commander of Virginia's militia during the French and Indian War, and Richard Henry Lee, who worked closely with Mason through their careers.

When the House of Burgesses assembled, Mason was initially appointed to a committee concerned with raising additional militia during that time of war. In 1759, he was appointed to the powerful Committee on Privileges and Elections. He was also placed on the Committee on Propositions and Grievances, which mostly considered local matters. Mason dealt with several local concerns, presenting a petition of Fairfax County planters against being assessed for a tobacco wharf at Alexandria, funds they felt should be raised through wharfage fees. He also played a major role as the Burgesses deliberated how to divide Prince William County as settlement expanded; in March 1759, Fauquier County was created by legislative act. In this, Mason opposed the interest of the family of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, who wanted existing counties expanded instead, including Fairfax. This difference may have contributed to Mason's decision not to seek re-election in 1761. Mason biographer Jeff Broadwater notes that Mason's committee assignments reflected the esteem his colleagues held him in, or at least the potential they saw. Broadwater did not find it surprising that Mason did not seek re-election, as he did not attend the sessions between 1759 and 1761.

Although the British were victorious over the French in the war, King George III's government felt that the North American colonies were not paying their way, since little direct tax revenue from the colonies was received. The Sugar Act 1764 had its greatest effect in New England and did not cause widespread objection. The Stamp Act the following year affected all 13 colonies, as it required revenue stamps to be used on papers required in trade and in the law. When word of passage of the Stamp Act reached Williamsburg, the House of Burgesses passed the Virginia Resolves, asserting that Virginians had the same rights as if they resided in Britain, and that they could only be taxed by themselves or their elected representatives. The Resolves were mostly written by a fiery-spoken new member for Louisa County, Patrick Henry.

Mason slowly moved from being a peripheral figure towards the center of Virginia politics, but his published response to the Stamp Act, which he opposed, is most notable for the inclusion of his anti-slavery views. George Washington or George William Fairfax, the burgesses for Fairfax County, may have asked Mason's advice as to what steps to take in the crisis. Mason drafted an act to allow for one of the most common court actions, replevin, to take place without the use of stamped paper, and sent it to George Washington, by then one of Fairfax County's burgesses, to gain passage. This action contributed to a boycott of the stamps. With the courts and trade paralyzed, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 but continued to assert the right to tax the colonies.

Following the repeal, a committee of London merchants issued a public letter to Americans, warning them not to declare victory. Mason published a response in June 1766, satirizing the British position, "We have, with infinite Difficulty & Fatigue got you excused this one Time; do what your Papa and Mamma bid, & hasten to return your most grateful Acknowledgements for condescending to let you keep what is your own." The Townshend Acts of 1767 were Britain's next attempt to tax the colonies, placing duties on substances including lead and glass, which provoked calls from the northern colonies for a boycott of British goods. Virginia, more dependent on goods imported from Britain, was less enthusiastic, and as local planters tended to receive goods at their river landings, a boycott would be difficult to enforce. In April 1769, Washington sent a copy of a Philadelphia resolution to Mason, asking his advice on what action Virginia should take. It is unknown who adapted that text for use in Virginia (Broadwater concludes it was Mason) but Mason sent Washington a corrected draft on April 23, 1769. Washington took it to Williamsburg, but the governor, Lord Botetourt, dissolved the legislature because of the radical resolutions it was passing. The Burgesses adjourned to a nearby tavern and there passed a non-importation agreement based on Mason's draft.

Although the resolution did not threaten to cut off tobacco, as Mason wanted, he worked in the following years for non-importation. The repeal of most of the Townshend duties made his task more difficult. In March 1773, his wife Ann died of illness contracted after another pregnancy. Mason was the sole parent to nine children, and his commitments made him even more reluctant to accept political office that would require him departing Gunston Hall.

Revolutionary War

In May 1774, Mason was in Williamsburg on real estate business. Word had just arrived of the passage of the Intolerable Acts, as Americans dubbed the legislative response to the Boston Tea Party, and a group of lawmakers including Lee, Henry, and Jefferson asked Mason to join them in formulating a course of action. The Burgesses passed a resolution for a day of fasting and prayer to obtain divine intervention against "destruction of our Civil Rights", but the governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the legislature rather than accept it. Mason may have helped write the resolution and likely joined the members after the dissolution when they met at Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg.

New elections had to be held for burgess and for delegate to the convention which had been called by the rump of the dissolved House of Burgesses, and Fairfax County's were set for July 5, 1774. George Washington planned to run for one seat and tried to get Mason or Bryan Fairfax to seek the other, but both men declined. Although the poll was postponed to July 14 because of poor weather, Washington met that day with other local leaders (including, likely, Mason) in Alexandria and selected a committee to draft a set of resolutions, which Washington hoped would "define our Constitutional Rights". The resulting Fairfax Resolves were largely drafted by Mason. He met with Washington on July 17 at Mount Vernon and stayed the night; the two men rode together to Alexandria the following day. The 24 propositions that made up the Resolves protested loyalty to the British Crown but denied the right of Parliament to legislate for colonies that had been settled at private expense and which had received charters from the monarch. The Resolves called for a continental congress. If Americans did not receive redress by November 1, exports, including that of tobacco, would be cut off. The freeholders of Fairfax County approved the Resolves, appointing Mason and Washington to a special committee in the emergency. According to early Virginia historian Hugh Grigsby, at Alexandria, Mason "made his first great movement on the theatre of the Revolution".

Washington took the Resolves to the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg. Although delegates made some changes, the adopted resolution closely tracked both the Fairfax Resolves and the scheme for non-exportation of tobacco Mason had proposed some years earlier. The convention elected delegates to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, including Lee, Washington, and Henry, and in October 1774, Congress adopted a similar embargo.

Much of Mason's efforts in 1774 and 1775 was in organizing a militia independent of the royal government. Washington by January 1775 was drilling a small force, and he and Mason purchased gunpowder for the company. Mason wrote in favor of annual election of militia officers in words that would later echo in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, "We came equal into this world, and equals shall we go out of it. All men are by nature born equally free and independent."

Washington's election as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress created a vacancy in Fairfax County's delegation to the third Virginia Convention. In May 1775, Washington wrote from Philadelphia, urging that the vacancy be filled. By this time, blood had been shed between American patriot militias and the British Army at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which launched the American Revolutionary War. Mason attempted to avoid election on the grounds of poor health and his obligations as a single parent to nine children. Nevertheless, he was elected and journeyed to Richmond, which, being further inland than Williamsburg, was deemed better protected from possible British attack.

When the Richmond convention began in July 1775, Mason was assigned to crucial committees, including one attempting to raise an army to protect the colony. According to Robert A. Rutland, "Sick or healthy, Mason was needed for his ability." Mason sponsored a non-exportation measure; it was passed by a large majority, though it had to be repealed later in the session to coordinate with one passed by Maryland. Despite pressure from many delegates, Mason refused to consider election as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in place of Washington after the Congress elected Washington commanding general of the Continental Army. But Mason could not avoid election to the Committee of Safety, a powerful group that took over many functions in the governmental vacuum. Mason proffered his resignation from this committee, but it was refused.

Declaration of Rights

thumb|alt=Young Thomas Jefferson|Mason's plan for Virginia's constitution was adopted over proposals by [[Thomas Jefferson (pictured) and others.]]

Illness forced Mason to abstain himself from the Committee of Safety for several weeks in 1775, and he did not attend the fourth convention, held in December 1775 and January 1776. With independence from Britain widely accepted as necessary among prominent Virginians, over Colonel Carter and William Fitzhugh. Two days later, a Richmond essayist criticized Mason and Richard Henry Lee (who did not attend) for the "barefaced impudence and folly" of public protests. Mason apparently was the only person elected to that convention for a constituency in which he did not live (although historically many of his ancestors had lived in and represented the county). Voter turnout was low, as many in remote areas without newspapers knew little about the constitution. The Federalists were believed to have a slight advantage in elected delegates; Mason thought that the convention would be unlikely to ratify the document without demanding amendments.

By the time the Richmond convention opened in June, Randolph had abandoned the Anti-Federalist cause, which damaged efforts by Mason and Henry to co-ordinate with their counterparts in New York. Mason moved that the convention consider the document clause by clause, which may have played into the hands of the Federalists, who feared what the outcome of an immediate vote might be, and who had more able leadership in Richmond, including Marshall and Madison. Nevertheless, Broadwater suggested that as most delegates had declared their views before the election, Mason's motion made little difference. Henry, far more a foe of a strong federal government than was Mason, took the lead for his side in the debate. Mason spoke several times in the discussion, on topics ranging from the pardon power (which he predicted the president would use corruptly) to the federal judiciary, which he warned would lead to suits in the federal courts by citizens against states where they did not live. John Marshall, a future Chief Justice of the United States, downplayed the concern regarding the judiciary, but Mason would later be proved correct in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), which led to the passage of the Eleventh Amendment.

The Federalists initially did not have a majority, with the balance held by undeclared delegates, mainly from western Virginia (today's Kentucky). The Anti-Federalists suffered repeated blows during the convention due to the defection of Randolph and as news came other states had ratified. Mason led a group of Anti-Federalists which drafted amendments: even the Federalists were open to supporting them, though the constitution's supporters wanted the document drafted in Philadelphia ratified first.

After some of the Kentuckians had declared for ratification, the convention considered a resolution to withhold ratification pending the approval of a declaration of rights. Supported by Mason but opposed by Madison, Light-Horse Harry Lee, Marshall, Nicholas, Randolph and Bushrod Washington, the resolution failed, 88–80. The seat went to James Monroe, who had supported Mason's Anti-Federalist stance, and who had, in 1789, lost to Madison for a seat in the House of Representatives. Judging by his correspondence, Mason softened his stance towards the new federal government, telling Monroe that the constitution "wisely & Properly directs" that ambassadors be confirmed by the Senate. Although Mason predicted that the amendments to be proposed to the states by the First Congress would be "Milk & Water Propositions", he displayed "much Satisfaction" at what became the Bill of Rights (ratified in 1791) and wrote that if his concerns about the federal courts and other matters were addressed, "I could cheerfully put my Hand & Heart to the new Government".

Washington, who was in 1789 elected the first president, resented Mason's strong stances against the ratification of the constitution, and these differences destroyed their friendship. Although some sources accept that Mason dined at Mount Vernon on November 2, 1788, Peter R. Henriques noted that Washington's diary states that Mr. George Mason was the guest, and as Washington, elsewhere in his diary, always referred to his former colleague at Philadelphia as Colonel Mason, the visitor was likely George Mason V, the son. Mason always wrote positively of Washington, and the president said nothing publicly, but in a letter referred to Mason as a "quondam friend" who would not recant his position on the constitution because "pride on the one hand, and want of manly candour on the other, will not I am certain let him acknowledge error in his opinions respecting it [the federal government] though conviction should flash on his mind as strongly as a ray of light". Rutland suggested that the two men were alike in their intolerance of opponents and suspicion of their motives.

Mason had long battled against Alexandria merchants who he felt unfairly dominated the county court, if only because they could more easily get to the courthouse. In 1789, he drafted legislation to move the courthouse to the center of the county, though it did not pass in his lifetime. In 1798, the legislature passed an authorizing act, and the courthouse opened in 1801. Most of those at Gunston Hall, both family and slaves, fell ill during the summer of 1792, experiencing chills and fever; when those subsided, Mason caught a chest cold. When Jefferson visited Gunston Hall on October 1, 1792, he found Mason, then suffering from gout, needing a crutch to walk, though still sound in mind and memory. Additional ailments, possibly pneumonia, set in. Less than a week after Jefferson's visit, on October 7, George Mason died at Gunston Hall, and was subsequently buried on the estate, within sight of the house he had built and of the Potomac River.

Although Mason's death attracted little notice, aside from a few mentions in local newspapers, Jefferson mourned "a great loss". Another future president, Monroe, stated that Mason's "patriotic virtues thro[ugh] the revolution will ever be remembered by the citizens of this country".

Views on slavery

thumb|[[Gunston Hall in May 2006]]

Mason routinely spoke out against slavery, even before America's independence. In 1773, he wrote that slavery was "that slow Poison, which is daily contaminating the Minds & Morals of our People. Every Gentlemen here is born a petty Tyrant." In 1774, he advocated ending the international slave trade.

Like nearly all large plantation owners in Virginia at the time, Mason owned many slaves. In Fairfax County, only George Washington owned more, and Mason is not known to have freed any, even in his March 1773 will ultimately transcribed into the Fairfax County probate records in October 1792 (the original was then lost). That will divided his slaves among his children (between twenty and three years old when Mason wrote it). Mason would continue trading in land as well as remarry (with a marriage agreement recorded in Prince William County in April 1780), and Virginia legalized manumission in May 1782. The childless Washington, in his will executed shortly before his death, ordered his slaves be freed after his wife's death, and Jefferson manumitted a few slaves, mostly of the Hemings family, including his own children by Sally Hemings. According to Broadwater, "In all likelihood, Mason believed, or convinced himself, that he had no options. Mason would have done nothing that might have compromised the financial futures of his nine children." Peter Wallenstein, in his article about how writers have interpreted Mason, argued that he could have freed some slaves without harming his children's future, if he had wanted to.

Mason's biographers and interpreters have long differed about how to present his views on slavery-related issues. Mason's great-great-grandniece Kate Mason Rowland, a charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy published a two-volume biography in 1892. Broadwater noted that she wrote "during the heyday of Jim Crow" and denied that Mason (her ancestor) was "an abolitionist in the modern sense of the term", arguing that Mason "regretted" slavery and was against the slave trade, but wanted slavery protected in the constitution. In 1919, Robert C. Mason published a biography of his prominent ancestor and asserted that George Mason "agreed to free his own slaves and was the first known abolitionist", refusing to sign the constitution, among other reasons because "as it stood then it did not abolish slavery or make preparation for its gradual extinction". Rutland, writing in 1961, asserted that in Mason's final days, "only the coalition [between New England and the Deep South at the Constitutional Convention] in Philadelphia that had bargained away any hope of eliminating slavery left a residue of disgust." Catherine Drinker Bowen, in her widely read 1966 account of the Constitutional Convention, Miracle at Philadelphia, contended that Mason believed slaves to be citizens and was "a fervent abolitionist before the word was coined".

Others took a more nuanced view. Pamela C. Copeland and Richard K. MacMaster deemed Mason's views similar to other Virginians of his class: "Mason's experience with slave labor made him hate slavery but his heavy investment in slave property made it difficult for him to divest himself of a system that he despised". According to Wallenstein, "whatever his occasional rhetoric, George Mason was—if one must choose—proslavery, not antislavery. He acted in behalf of Virginia slaveholders, not Virginia slaves". Broadwater noted, "Mason consistently voiced his disapproval of slavery. His 1787 attack on slavery echoes a similar speech to the Virginia Convention of 1776. His conduct was another matter."

According to Wallenstein, historians and other writers "have had great difficulty coming to grips with Mason in his historical context, and they have jumbled the story in related ways, misleading each other and following each other's errors". Some of this is due to conflation of Mason's views on slavery with that of his desire to ban the African slave trade, which he unquestionably opposed and fought against. His record otherwise is mixed: Virginia banned the importation of slaves from abroad in 1778, while Mason was in the House of Delegates. In 1782, after he had returned to Gunston Hall, it enacted legislation that allowed manumission of adult slaves young enough to support themselves (not older than 45). However, a proposal, supported by Mason, to require freed slaves to leave Virginia within a year or be sold at auction, was defeated. Broadwater asserted, "Mason must have shared the fears of Jefferson and countless other whites that whites and free blacks could not live together".

The contradiction between wanting protection for slave property, while opposing the slave trade, was pointed out by delegates to the Richmond convention such as George Nicholas, a supporter of ratification. Mason stated of slavery, "it is far from being a desirable property. But it will involve us in great difficulties and infelicity to be now deprived of them."

Sites and remembrance

thumb|[[George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, named in honor of Mason, with a statue of him, in 2015.]]

There are sites remembering George Mason in Fairfax County. Gunston Hall, donated to the Commonwealth of Virginia by its last private owner, is now "dedicated to the study of George Mason, his home and garden, and life in 18th-century Virginia". George Mason University, with its main campus adjacent to the city of Fairfax, was formerly George Mason College of the University of Virginia from 1959 until it received its present name in 1972. A major landmark on the Fairfax campus is a statue of George Mason by Wendy M. Ross, depicted as he presents his first draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

The George Mason Memorial Bridge, part of the 14th Street Bridge, connects Northern Virginia to Washington, D.C. The George Mason Memorial in West Potomac Park in Washington, also with a statue by Ross, was dedicated on April 9, 2002.

Mason was honored in 1981 by the United States Postal Service with an 18-cent Great Americans series postage stamp. A bas-relief of Mason appears in the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives as one of 23 honoring great lawmakers. Mason's image is located above and to the right of the Speaker's chair; he and Jefferson are the only Americans recognized.

Legacy and historical view

thumb|"[[Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen", written mainly by Marquis de Lafayette under Thomas Jefferson's influence, was based on ideals codified by Mason and was a summation of ideals that inspired the French Revolution.]]

Although Mason did not sign either the Declaration or the Constitution, the ideas he championed lived in prominence while their author's star faded.

According to Miller, "The succession of New World constitutions of which Virginia's, with Mason as its chief architect, was the first, declared the source of political authority to be the people ... in addition to making clear what a government was entitled to do, most of them were prefaced by a list of individual rights of the citizens ... rights whose maintenance was government's primary reason for being. Mason wrote the first of these lists." Diane D. Pikcunas, in her article prepared for the bicentennial of the U.S. Bill of Rights, wrote that Mason "made the declaration of rights as his personal crusade". Tarter deemed Mason "celebrated as a champion of constitutional order and one of the fathers of the Bill of Rights". Supreme Court associate justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed, "George Mason's greatest contribution to present day Constitutional law was his influence on our Bill of Rights".

Mason's legacy extended overseas, doing so even in his lifetime, and though he never visited Europe, his ideals did. Lafayette's "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" was written in the early days of the French Revolution under the influence of Jefferson, the U.S. Minister to France. According to historian R.R. Palmer, "there was in fact a remarkable parallel between the French Declaration and the Virginia Declaration of 1776". Another scholar, Richard Morris, concurred, deeming the resemblance between the two texts "too close to be coincidental": "the Virginia statesman George Mason might well have instituted an action of plagiarism".

Donald J. Senese, in the conclusion to the collection of essays on Mason published in 1989, noted that several factors contributed to Mason's obscurity in the century after his death. Mason was older than many of those who served in Philadelphia and subsequently came into prominence with the new federal government. Mason died soon after the constitution came into force and displayed no ambition for federal office, declining a seat in the Senate. Mason left no extensive paper trail and, unlike Franklin, who authored an autobiography, left no diary like Washington or John Adams. Washington left papers collected into 100 volumes; for Mason, many of whose documents lost to fire, there were only three that endured. Mason fought on the side that failed, both at Philadelphia and Richmond, leaving him a loser in a history written by winners, even his speeches to the Constitutional Convention descend through the pen of Madison, a supporter of ratification. After the Richmond convention, he was, according to Senese, "a prophet without honor in his own country".

The increased scrutiny of Mason which has accompanied his rise from obscurity has meant, according to Tarter, that "his role in the creation of some of the most important texts of American liberty is not as clear as it seems". Rutland suggested that Mason showed only "belated concern over the personal rights of citizens". Focusing on Mason's dissent from the constitution, Miller pointed to the intersectional bargain struck over navigation acts and the slave trade, "Mason lost on both counts, and the double defeat was reflected in his attitude thereafter." Wallenstein concluded, "the personal and economic interests of Mason's home state took precedence over a bill of rights".

Whatever his motivations, Mason proved a forceful advocate for a bill of rights whose Objections helped accomplish his aims. Rutland noted that "from the opening phrase of his Objections to the Bill of Rights that James Madison offered in Congress two years later, the line is so direct that we can say that Mason forced Madison's hand. Federalist supporters of the Constitution could not overcome the protest caused by Mason's phrase 'There is no declaration of rights'." O'Connor wrote that "Mason lost his battle against ratification ... [but] his ideals and political activities have significantly influenced our constitutional jurisprudence." Wallenstein felt that there is much to be learned from Mason:

See also

  • History of the United States Constitution
  • List of civil rights leaders

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • George Mason biography
  • Gunston Hall Home Page
  • Website of George Mason University