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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. [1] [2] [3] Mason's parents owned property in Mason Neck, Virginia and a second property across the Potomac River in Maryland, which had been inherited by his mother.
George Mason was the principal author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. The Declaration was adopted unanimously by the Fifth Virginia Convention at Williamsburg, Virginia on June 12, 1776, as a separate document from the Constitution of Virginia which was later adopted on June 29, 1776. [4]
These included the older generation of George Mason, George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, and the younger Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. [3] The third party was a minority of young men mainly from western Virginia in present-day West Virginia. This party was led by Patrick Henry and others who supported independence from Britain prior to 1775. [4]
Jefferson's most immediate sources were two documents written in June 1776: his own draft of the preamble of the Constitution of Virginia, and George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Ideas and phrases from both of these documents appear in the Declaration of Independence. [74] [22]: 125–126 Mason's opening was: Section 1.
Among those who drafted the 1776 Constitution were George Mason and James Madison. Thomas Jefferson was Virginia's representative to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia at the time, and his drafts of the Virginia constitution arrived too late to be incorporated into the final document. [ 3 ]
George Mason, author of the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights and co-father of the United States Bill of Rights. On May 10, 1775, less than three weeks after the Battles at Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress convened in the Pennsylvania State House.
The convention amended, and on June 12 adopted, George Mason's Declaration of Rights, a precursor to the United States Bill of Rights. On June 29, the convention approved the first Constitution of Virginia. The convention chose Patrick Henry as the first governor of the new Commonwealth of Virginia, and he was inaugurated on June 29, 1776. Thus ...
The Virginia Declaration of Rights, chiefly authored by George Mason and approved by the Virginia Convention on June 12, 1776, contains the wording: "all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights of which . . . they cannot deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with ...