Stephan Schwartz asks me to post this reply to Prof. Finkelman.  His "reply"
function has hit some glitch.
Henry Wiencek


I will do so, Paul.  Thank you.  However,there will have to be something
very compelling in the argument that I have missed so far, because Mason
seems to have disliked slavery most because he saw it created societal and
personal weakness, just as it had in Rome, a comparison which carried far
more weight in that day than in this, as I know you know.

 Mason clearly saw slaves as people.  He prided himself on not   having
illusions, and I think he had none about slavery.  It was   about owning
people and making them do what you wanted. In a world   where every human
transaction with man, woman, or child,  day in   and day out, could not help
but be freighted with the power   relationship that exists between a master
and a slave, Mason who   came up with the idea that rights accrued by reason
of being a   human, not from the state or crown, and that this had to be
acknowledged in a democracy's foundation documents, surely   understood a
lack of rights.  Mason was a devotedly, notably,   faithful mate.  He had
never been a rake.  And he could not have   failed to notice  the mixed race
children on his friend's farms.    He grew up in a world where a significant
portion of the female   population could not say, "No."  He watched the boys
who lived in   that world become men, as he did so himself.  He understood
the   sexuality implicit in slavery.  And saw that it often had a   negative
effect on his friends.    And, although he never   travelled, he was an
international businessman, who actually made   the system work. If his
choices in 1787 did not make it clear   enough, his business correspondence,
which is most of what   survives, makes it plain that he was also a man who
really did care   about principles.  I don't think Mason had moral outrage
about   slavery, in the modern sense, it was, and had been, from time
immemorial a part of the world.  Although it is speculation I think   he
assumed that most of the Africans, once freed, would go back to   work on
the plantations where they lived.  Nothing Mason did   throughout his life,
except for the Revolution, bespoke a man in   any way interested in social
disruption.  And he certainly did not   see social equality with most
whites, let alone Africans.  He was a   rich man, whose family had been
gentry for generations.

 For Mason I think, the problem was that slavery made white people   weak
and petty.  Mason cherished land. He was vested with 20,000   acres, and
died with 80-100,000.  He stayed with land projects   years after they had
been abandoned by others.   And he saw land   and fortune squandered over
and over by stupid decisions of men of   his class made weak from the
narcisscism slavery engenders.  People   who are "petty tyrants" are
self-indulgent.  They don't think   smart.  We know that Mason hated to be
saddled with committee work   that required him to work with these planters.
Calling most of   them"babblers."   My view, at this point, is that Mason
disliked   the slave trade surely because it lowered his investment worth
(he   was a prudent businessman at all times) but mostly, because it fed
the system he wanted to see ended.  His concern about slaves was   not as
pressing, because he understood that all slave owners had to   get behind
the program for it to work. It would take a generation   or more.   I think
for Mason it was not so much about black people   as it was white people.
It is no more complicated than that he saw   North America as a new start,
and slavery as a mistake that should   be unravelled before it did more
damage.   We know he also saw the   potential for civil strife over the
issue in the future.

 -- Stephan

 On 6 Dec 2005, at 00:44, Paul Finkelman wrote:

 whether Mason "loathed slavery" seems open to question.  See the   article
on Mason and slavery by the Virginia Tech historian Peter   Wallenstein in
Va. Magazine of History and Biography, April, 1994.  He make the   careful
distinction between the slave trade which he did loathe ( but  which also
lowered the market value of his own slaves) and slavery, which he did not
loathe all that much.

 paul finkelman

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