| Existing comment:
George Mason (1725-1792) was called on in 1776 to draft the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Thomas Jefferson rephrased a few weeks later in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. Mason opposed ratification of the US Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights. Mason's 1776 document was the model for the federal Bill of Rights, adopted as amendments to the US Constitution in 1791. Mason was an active opponent of the slave trade, but he was not an abolitionist. |