Anti-Slavery Delegates: George Mason

George Mason (Virginia): The second strongest denunciation of slavery came from a Virginia planter who was a large-scale slave owner:

"Slavery discourages arts & manufactures.  The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.  They prevent the immigration of Whites, who really enrich & strengthen a country.  They produce the most pernicious effect on manners.  Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.  They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country.  As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this.  By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins by national calamities."

So what is Mason saying here?  He is denouncing slavery, obviously, but what troubles him most about slavery is not so much the wrong done to slaves as the damage done to (white) society.  Unlike Morris, Mason addressed his strongest denunciation of slavery to slave importation, rather than slave representation.  He was quick to dissociate Virginia from any complicity in the crime:

This infernal trafic (sic.) originated in the avarice of British Merchants.  The British Govt constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it. . . . He lamented that some of our Eastern [New England] brethren had from a lust of gain embarked in this nefarious traffic [8/22/87, pp. 503-504].

When the compromise was reached protecting the importation of slaves, Mason had no objections to using the word “slaves,” but opposed naming the state which wanted to import them.  He considered taxing imported slaves as a lesser evil than importing them; not to tax amounted to a bounty .  On the subject of slave representation, Mason believed that some slaves should be included in representation because they were a source of wealth and might in cases of emergency become soldiers.  But his opposition to slavery would not allow him to favor including all slaves in representation, even though it would be favorable to Virginia.

            On export taxes and commercial regulations, Mason acted as a Southerner, and particularly as a Virginian.  He opposed a federal tax on exports as oppressive to Southern States [8/16/87, pp. 466-67; 8/21/87, p. 501].  When the states were forbidden from taxing exports (a major source of revenue for Virginia), he held out (successfully) at least for allowing Virginia to charge inspection and storage fees on its exported tobacco.  He also favored requiring a 2/3 majority for a navigation act to protect the South, which would otherwise deliver them up “bound hand & foot” to the North.  What he feared most, Mason said, was not so much in increase in freight, but a few merchants in Boston, New York and Philadelphia monopolizing trade.

            When Mason refused to sign the Constitution, several of the reasons he gave were specifically Virginian objections.  He objected to Congress’s authority to regulate foreign trade by a simple majority, a provision very popular in the North.  He objected to the prohibition on states taxing exports, even though Virginia was using this provision to unjustly tax North Carolina tobacco being exported through Virginia, without any voice or benefit.  And he objected to the protection of slave importation, saying that he would rather see South Carolina and Georgia secede than agree to such a provision.  Mason’s opposition to slavery had its limits.  In the Virginia ratifying convention, he objected not only to the protection of slave trade, but also to the failure to protect slavery where it existed from any interference from Congress.  Nor, so far as I can tell, did he free his own slaves, even in his will.