George Mason was the principal author of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, adopted in 1776 during the era honored by America250.
Mason drafted the document for the Fifth Virginia Convention, which adopted it on June 12, 1776. It proclaimed that people possessed inherent rights and described government as accountable to the people. Its language influenced later American constitutional thought.
The declaration helped shape the United States Declaration of Independence, drafted in the same revolutionary year. It also influenced the United States Bill of Rights, proposed by James Madison in 1789 and ratified in 1791. Mason’s work therefore connects Virginia’s state-level revolution with the nation’s later federal framework.
Mason attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 but refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights and did not sufficiently restrict slavery. He was not the sole contributor to Virginia’s declaration: delegates amended the draft, and James Madison influenced its religious-freedom provision.