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
>
> Stephan A. Schwartz wrote:
>
>>  Washington appears to have followed the plan espoused by George
>> Mason, his former friend, and mentor. Mason loathed slavery, and
>> deplored the deliberate policy on the part of many planters of
>> keeping slaves illiterate and uneducated.  Sending slaves back to
>> Africa, to Mason, seemed cruel, and very unlikely to be successful.
>> Also he didn’t think the slaves would want to go back, and he was
>> right.  (By 1847, even with free passage, only 13,000 former slaves
>> had made the trip back to Africa.)   In his typical blunt style he
>> wrote, “. . . that slow Poison, [slavery] . . . is daily
>> contaminating the Minds & Morals of our People. Every Gentlemen here
>> is born a petty Tyrant. Practiced in Acts of Despotism & Cruelty, we
>> become callous to the Dictates of Humanity, & all the finer feelings
>> of the Soul. Taught to regard a part of our own Species [note this
>> recognition, quite different from Jefferson's equivocations - SAS] in
>> the most abject & contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of
>> the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for
>> great & useful purposes. Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon
>> the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment,
>> if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds. And in such an
>> infernal School are to be educated our future Legislators & Rulers.”
>> Although the evidence is spotty it seems very probable to me that
>> Mason's ideal was compensated emancipation, in which the planter
>> class was reimbursed from the public treasury for the value of their
>> "property", in return for which they set aside money to train their
>> former slaves so that they could read and write, and have the
>> rudiments of civic knowledge -- not much different than most of the
>> lower income whites -- to be productive citizens.   This would have
>> had the effect of limiting social disruption, which Mason saw as a
>> major source of concern, of assuring that the leadership class was
>> not destroyed, and of giving the Africans  a chance to make a place
>> for themselves.  I have seen figures that this would have cost about
>> $24 million, a huge sum for the times, but a pittance when considered
>> against the costs of the Civil War, which Mason foresaw.  Mason,
>> himself, could not do it;  he realized that a single planter would
>> beggar his children through manumission, and destroy their place in
>> society (as important as the money).  But Washington, childless,
>> appears to have learnt the lesson, and followed through almost
>> exactly the plan Mason had conceived.
>>
>> -- Stephan
>>
>>
>> Stephan A. Schwartz
>> 932 North Oriole Drive  *  Virginia Beach, Virginia 23451
>> Schwartzreport:  http://www.schwartzreport.net
>> Personal Website:  http://www.stephanaschwartz.com
>>
>> On 5 Dec 2005, at 20:33, Henry Wiencek wrote:
>>
>>> With the TJ/Hemings issue in full conflagration again, I would like
>>> to roll
>>> back to Jurretta Heckscher's eloquent post on GW.  She wrote: "I
>>> would argue
>>> that Washington . . .  must be presumed to have believed almost
>>> inevitably
>>> in white racial superiority. That was, quite simply, one of the   
>>> bedrock
>>> foundations of the world that made and sustained him--and if he  
>>> broke
>>> extensively with that belief in his own mind, as I at least would
>>> need to
>>> see demonstrated by an unambiguous pronouncement."
>>>
>>> He did break with that world by freeing his slaves and he did make a
>>> "pronouncement" in his will, in which he not only freed his  
>>> slaves but
>>> specified that they be taught to read & write, be "brought up to
>>> some useful
>>> occupation," and further ordered that no slave be transported out of
>>> Virginia "under any pretence whatsoever."  This is my   
>>> interpretation
>>> of that
>>> pronouncement: Washington believed that blacks had a right to
>>> freedom; that
>>> formerly enslaved blacks were quite amenable to education and   
>>> training;
>>> furthermore, he clearly believed that they had a claim to  
>>> education  and
>>> decent work; finally, he seems to have believed that with  
>>> education  and
>>> training the freed children of slaves could immediately take a
>>> fruitful and
>>> productive place in Virginia society as free people because he
>>> emphatically
>>> specified that no one should be exiled.  I don't think a racist of
>>> the 1790s
>>> variety would write such a will.
>>>
>>> Henry Wiencek
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Paul Finkelman
> Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
> University of Tulsa College of Law
> 3120 East 4th Place
> Tulsa, OK   74104-3189
>
> 918-631-3706 (office)
> 918-631-2194 (fax)
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
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