George Mason and the Birth of American Rights

George Mason is often considered one of America’s forgotten founders – a man whose ideas deeply shaped the nation, even though his name is less famous than peers like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison. In his own time, Mason’s contemporaries admired his intellect and statesmanship: Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph ranked him behind none of the sons of Virginia in knowledge of her history and interest, noting Mason’s ability to see straight to the core of any issue. Historian Ralph Ketcham observes that Mason was widely acknowledged as having the most profound understanding of republican government of any man in Virginia, to the point that even Jefferson and Madison deferred to him as their mentor on matters of political theory.