George Mason

George Mason wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776. Thomas Jefferson drew from it when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. James Madison drew from it when he drafted the Bill of Rights. Mason then attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787, spoke more than any Virginia delegate except Madison, delivered spoke against slavery at the Convention, moved for a Bill of Rights — and refused to sign the Constitution when his motion was rejected. The primary sources document all of it.

Mason was born in 1725 in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was a planter, a neighbor and associate of George Washington, and a largely self-educated student of political philosophy and law. He held enslaved people at Gunston Hall — more than 100 across his lifetime, none freed. He served in the Virginia legislature but largely avoided national office, preferring local governance. When the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in May 1787, he attended as a Virginia delegate. He did not sign the document produced on September 17, 1787. He died in 1792.

On June 12, 1776, the Virginia Convention of Delegates adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights unanimously. The document was drafted primarily by George Mason. It preceded the Declaration of Independence by twenty-three days. Jefferson, serving on the Committee of Five in Philadelphia, had access to a published version of Mason's draft.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights established, in a single document, the foundational claims that would reappear in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Bill of Rights: that all men are by nature free and equal, that government derives its authority from the people, that the people have the right to reform or abolish government that fails them, and that specific rights — freedom of the press, trial by jury, free exercise of religion — are beyond the reach of government authority.

Section 16 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights addressed religion directly: "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience." This language — free exercise of religion, not established by the state — carried forward into the First Amendment.

Mason attended the Constitutional Convention from its opening in May 1787 through its close in September. Madison's Notes record his speeches throughout. On August 22, 1787, when the Convention debated the slave trade clause — the provision that would protect the importation of enslaved people until at least 1808 — Mason rose to speak directly against the slave trade and against slavery itself. Madison recorded his words.

Mason held more than 100 enslaved people at Gunston Hall across his lifetime. He freed none. Gunston Hall's institutional archive documents both the enslaved community at the plantation and Mason's record on the subject. The archive holds both the speech and the plantation record. The convention record and the estate record are both primary sources.

On September 12, 1787 — five days before the Convention adjourned — the Committee of Style presented its final draft of the Constitution. Roger Sherman noted that the state declarations of rights were sufficient. Mason disagreed. Madison's Notes record what happened next.

Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts made the motion. Mason seconded it. Sherman argued the state bills of rights were sufficient and the legislature could be trusted. Mason responded directly: "The Laws of the U. S. are to be paramount to State Bills of Rights." The motion was put to a vote. Every state delegation voted against it. The motion failed ten states to zero. Madison's Notes record the outcome on the same page as Mason's speech.

Mason also moved, on August 31, to allow the state conventions to propose amendments to a second general convention. That motion also failed. On September 15, two days before the signing, Madison's Notes record Mason stating "that he would sooner chop off his right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands." On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates signed the Constitution. Mason did not.

In September 1787, Mason wrote out his reasons for refusing to sign. The document was circulated in manuscript and then published in newspapers. It became known as "Objections to This Constitution of Government." The National Archives holds the text. It contains sixteen objections. The first is the absence of a Bill of Rights.

Mason's Objections were published and widely read during the ratification debates. Patrick Henry used them in the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788 to argue against ratification. James Madison, who had opposed the inclusion of a Bill of Rights during the Convention, introduced the proposed amendments in the First Congress in 1789 — drawing directly on Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights as the model. Ten of Madison's proposed twelve amendments were ratified on December 15, 1791, as the Bill of Rights.

Mason's position at the Convention — that the Constitution required a Bill of Rights — was rejected by every state delegation on September 12, 1787. Within four years, his position had become the law. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Mason died in 1792, the year after.

Popular memory favors the men who signed the Constitution and the Declaration. Mason signed neither founding document at the national level — he refused the Constitution and was not a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776. His contributions were structural and textual: the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which shaped both the Declaration and the Bill of Rights, and the Convention speeches that put the Bill of Rights debate on the record. The archive documents both. The popular memory largely does not.