An interesting, behind-the-scenes tidbit from The Writer’s Almanac about the Bill of Rights:
It was on this day (December 15) in 1791 that the Bill of Rights was adopted by the United States, thanks in part to a man who hasn’t gotten a lot of credit, George Mason. He was a lifelong friend of George Washington’s who wasn’t interested in politics, but when Washington was named Commander of the Continental Army, George Mason reluctantly took over his friend’s seat on the Virginia legislature. And then Mason was assigned by chance to the committee to write the new state constitution.
Mason had read the philosopher John Locke, and he liked Locke’s idea that all people are born with certain rights, and that government’s purpose should be to protect those rights. George Mason believed that the best way to protect those rights would be to list them in the constitution itself. And so he put together Virginia’s “Declaration of Rights,” the first government document in history that specified the absolute rights of individuals. Mason’s ideas about rights and freedom influenced a 25-year-old legislator named James Madison, who passed them along to his friend Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson would go on to use Mason’s ideas in his own draft of the Declaration of Independence.
Mason was asked to participate in the Constitutional Convention after the war, but he disagreed with the other delegates on numerous issues, especially slavery, which he thought should be outlawed in the new constitution. He fought for the inclusion of a list of rights, like the “Declaration of Rights” in the Virginia Constitution, but his idea for a bill of rights failed by a wide margin.
And so, when it came time to sign to the new U.S. Constitution, George Mason was one of the only men there who refused. He said, “I would sooner chop off [my] right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands.” His decision ruined his friendship with George Washington. The two men never called on each other again. But he hoped that his protest would encourage an eventual passage of a bill of rights, and it did. His former protege, James Madison, introduced the Bill of Rights into the first session of Congress in 1789, and Madison used Virginia’s Declaration of Rights as the model.
Even with the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution didn’t provide full citizenship to blacks or women, among others, and it has had to be amended again and again over the years. But when we think of what it means to have a free country, most of our ideas about the meaning of freedom come from those first 10 amendments, adopted on this day in 1791, which include the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the right to a fair trial. George Mason died in 1792, a year after those freedoms and rights became law.
I’ve heard this story — or parts of it, anyway — before, and I’ve posted about this as well, but the history stirs me. There are well-known heroes from the founding of our country such as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, et al who capture the imagination and even inspire some of us to think about what it would have been like to be so-and-so, or to aspire to that kind of historical significance for ourselves in our own time.
My own aspiration, however, would be to be more like a George Mason, where the Cause or the Idea lives on even if one’s name fades from the knowledge of all but the most scholarly. I imagine Mason, inspired by the Vision of what could be and the unique opportunity at-hand, devoting his time, energy and treasure to the pursuit of creating not just a new kind of government but a new kind of human existence. I see him working with the great minds and characters of the day to bring the concept to fruition, only at the last, to see the vision defaced and even crippled.
How long, I wonder, did he pray and agonize over his decision to sign or not sign the Constitution? Or was it a simple decision of honor and conviction that hardly required a moment’s hesitation? Think of the pressures put on him by the other delegates, many who may have shared his views, but urged him to be “practical” or to be satisfied with what was already a remarkable achievement, or tried to discourage him from his “meaningless” protest that couldn’t stop what was already decided! What would I have done in that circumstance? What would you have done?
What difference would his signature then have made in our lives today? What our lives would be like if so much of what we now take for granted had not been enumerated, and what would happen should these ever cease to be defended. Let us think of what is at stake if we are encouraged to be “practical” or urged to refrain from our meaningless protests.
