George Mason

A storm capsized his father's boat on the Potomac on March 5, 1735. George Mason IV was nine, and heir to more than 20,000 acres in Stafford County alone. His mother ran the estates until he came of age. There was no college for him and no legal training. A Mr. Williams was engaged at 1,000 pounds of tobacco a year, then a boarding arrangement in Maryland, then a Dr. Bridges, and past that the Mercer library, one of the largest in Virginia, where a boy could read what he liked. Mason stayed a planter by trade all his life. By 1749 he was a Truro Parish vestryman and an investor in the Ohio Company, whose accounts he kept for the next 40 years.

He wrote the Fairfax Resolves in 1774, the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted June 12, 1776, and much of the state constitution passed 17 days after it. Eleven years later he went to Philadelphia, lost the fights over the slave trade and the navigation acts, and would not put his name to the result. His pamphlet of objections opened with the line: there is no declaration of rights. Virginia ratified anyway, 89 to 79. BriefHistory carries the convention and its consequences. This page is about the planter who made the argument.

In 1773 he wrote that slavery was that slow Poison, which is daily contaminating the Minds and Morals of our People, and that every gentleman in Virginia was born a petty tyrant. He wrote his will the same year, dividing the people he owned among his children, the youngest of them three. Only Washington held more enslaved people in Fairfax County. Virginia legalized manumission in May 1782. Mason lived another decade and is not known to have freed anyone, by deed or by will. Washington ordered his freed after his wife's death, and Jefferson released a few. His biographer Jeff Broadwater concluded that Mason believed, or convinced himself, that he had no options. Other scholars read the same record as self-interest.

His death drew a few notices in local papers. Jefferson called it a great loss. That was largely that. Washington left papers that fill 100 volumes and Mason left three, much of the rest lost to fire, so his speeches at Philadelphia survive mostly in Madison's handwriting. Donald Senese called him a prophet without honor in his own country. The words traveled better than the man. Richard Morris judged the resemblance between Mason's 1776 text and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man too close to be coincidental and wrote that Mason might well have brought an action for plagiarism. A Virginia college took his name in 1972. A memorial in West Potomac Park was dedicated April 9, 2002.

George Mason's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Ohio Company of Virginia company
  He invested in 1749 and kept its books from 1752 1749
• Gunston Hall building
  Begun about 1755 and eventually the whole of Dogue's Neck 1755
• The Fairfax Resolves other
  Largely his answer to the Intolerable Acts 1774
• Virginia Declaration of Rights law
  Adopted June 12, 1776 — the template a generation copied 1776
• Constitution of Virginia law
  Signed June 29, 1776, and largely his draft 1776
• Objections to This Constitution of Government article
  Published October 1787 and quoted against ratification everywhere 1787

• March 5, 1735 aged 9 His father drowns crossing the Potomac in a storm George Mason III owned 20,875 acres in Stafford County alone. His son was nine.
• 1747 aged ~22 Named to the Fairfax County Court at 21
• April 4, 1750 aged 24 Marries Ann Eilbeck Nine of their children lived to adulthood. She died in 1773.
• 1758 aged ~33 Elected to the House of Burgesses for Fairfax County He served three years and did not seek a fourth.
• June 12, 1776 aged 50 Virginia adopts his Declaration of Rights The convention inserted a clause that excluded the enslaved from the equality article.
• September 17, 1787 aged 61 Leaves Philadelphia without signing the Constitution He and Elbridge Gerry and Edmund Randolph were the three who refused.
• June 25, 1788 aged 62 Virginia ratifies 89 to 79 and Mason votes no
• 1790 aged ~65 Declines a seat in the United States Senate He said his health would not permit it. James Monroe took the seat.
• October 7, 1792 aged 66 Dies at Gunston Hall Gout, a chest cold and probably pneumonia. Jefferson had visited six days before.

• James Madison 1751–1836
  Fourth President and Father of the Constitution who co-authored the Federalist Papers. forced his hand
• Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826
  Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President who oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. borrowed his language
• George Washington 1732–1799
  First President of the United States and commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. friendship ended over ratification
• Patrick Henry 1736–1799
  Revolutionary orator and Virginia leader remembered for mobilizing resistance and opposing centralized federal power. ally against ratification
• John Marshall 1755–1835
  Chief justice who established judicial review and strengthened the Supreme Court and federal government. opposed at Richmond
• James Monroe 1758–1831
  Fifth president associated with the Monroe Doctrine and an era of territorial expansion and one-party dominance. took the Senate seat he refused