James M. Mason
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
In office January 6, 1857 – March 4, 1857
Preceded by	Jesse D. Bright
Succeeded by	Thomas J. Rusk
United States Senator fromVirginia
In office January 21, 1847 – March 28, 1861
Preceded by	Isaac S. Pennybacker
Succeeded by	Waitman T. Willey
Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromVirginia's15th district
In office March 4, 1837 – March 3, 1839
Preceded by	Edward Lucas
Succeeded by	William Lucas
Member of theVirginia House of Delegates fromFrederick County
In office December 1, 1828 – December 4, 1831 Serving with William Castleman, William Wood
Preceded by	William Barton
Succeeded by	Constituency reestablished
In office December 4, 1826 – December 2, 1827 Serving with James Ship
Preceded by	George Kiger
Succeeded by	William Barton
Personal details
Born	James Murray Mason (1798-11-03)November 3, 1798 Analostan Island, D.C., U.S.
Died	April 28, 1871(1871-04-28) (aged 72) Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.
Resting place	Christ Church Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Eliza Chew
Education	University of Pennsylvania (BA) College of William & Mary (LLB)
Signature

James Murray Mason (November 3, 1798 – April 28, 1871) was an American lawyer and politician who became a Confederate diplomat. He served assenator fromVirginia, having previously representedFrederick County, Virginia, in theVirginia House of Delegates.^[1][2]

A grandson ofGeorge Mason, Mason strongly supported slavery as well as Virginia's secession as theAmerican Civil War began. As chairman of theUnited States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1851 until his expulsion in 1861 for supporting theConfederate States of America, Mason took great interest in protecting American cotton exporters. As the Confederacy's leading diplomat, he traveled to Europe seeking support, but proved unable to get the United Kingdom to recognize the Confederacy as a country. As Mason sailed to England in November 1861, the U.S. Navy captured his ship and detained him, in what became known as theTrent Affair. Released after two months, Mason continued his voyage, and assisted Confederate purchases from Britain and Europe but failed to achieve their diplomatic involvement. As the war ended, Mason went into exile in Canada, but later returned toAlexandria, Virginia, where he died in 1871.^[3]

Mason was born on Analostan Island, nowTheodore Roosevelt Island, in theDistrict of Columbia. He graduated from theUniversity of Pennsylvania (1818), then studied law inWilliamsburg, Virginia and earned a law degree from theCollege of William & Mary (1820).

Following admission to the Virginia bar, Mason practiced law in Virginia, and also operated a plantation in Frederick County. Despite a sloppy and damaged census record, he may have owned 5 slaves in the 1830 census.^[4] In the 1850 federal census, Mason owned ten enslaved people, half of them children under ten years of age.^[5] In that year, he (or another man of similar name) also owned a 25 year old Black woman and her four children in nearbyRappahannock County.^[6] In the 1860 census, Mason owned a 49 year old Black man, 35 year old Black woman, and children aged 14, 13, 12, 10 and 3 years old.^[7] and he or another James M. Mason owned seven enslaved children (the oldest a 13-year-old girl) in southern Culpeper County.^[8]

Mason soon began his political career, well before his father's death, winning election several times as one ofFrederick County's (part-time) representatives in theVirginia House of Delegates. His first term began on December 4, 1826, alongside one-term veteran James Ship, but only Ship won re-election the following year. In 1828, Ship failed to win re-election and Mason won the election to represent the gateway to theShenandoah Valley together with William Castleman, Jr., and both won re-election the following year. After veteran legislator Hierome L. Opie, one of the four joint delegates of Frederick and neighboring Jefferson County to theVirginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830, resigned, Mason took his place alongsideJohn R. Cooke, congressmanAlfred H. Powell and fellow delegate Thomas Griggs Jr. Although some had hoped that convention would limit slaveholder power, the resulting constitution only gave additional votes to western Virginians (including those in Frederick County and those counties which would secede and becomeWest Virginia during the American Civil War), so Mason and Castleman were re-elected and joined byWilliam Wood for the 1830-1831 legislative session.^[9]

In 1836, CongressmanEdward Lucas ofShepherdstown (in what would becomeWest Virginia decades later) announced his retirement. Voters inVirginia's 15th congressional district elected Mason as his successor in theTwenty-fifth United States Congress. TheJackson Democrat only served a single term, succeeded by Lucas' brotherWilliam Lucas.^[10]

In 1847, Virginia legislators elected Mason to the Senate after incumbentIsaac S. Pennybacker died in office, and Mason won re-election in 1850 and 1856. Mason famously read aloud the dying SenatorJohn C. Calhoun's final speech to the Senate, on March 4, 1850, which warned of the likely breakup of the country if theNorth did not permanently accept the existence of slavery in theSouth, as well as its expansion into the Western territories. Mason also complained of Northernpersonal liberty laws, intended to helpfugitive slaves: "Although the loss of property is felt, the loss ofhonor is felt still more."^[11]

Mason wasPresident pro tempore of the Senate in 1857.

Mason "championed the Southern political platform", "and slavery, another of the three themes that most affected his life, lay at the core of that political ideology."^[12] (The other two themes were the secession of Virginia and the establishment of the Confederacy.)

Mason was not only awhite supremacist, he believed that negroes were "the great curse of the country". Giving Blacks the vote particularly offended him; it was, he thought, the rule of the mob and the "end of the republic."^{[13][14]: 260}

He so believed in the beneficence of slavery that, unlike many others in Frederick County, Mason refused to support thecolonization project that led to the founding ofLiberia. Mason's solution to the "problem" of free blacks was returning them to slavery, stating they were better off enslaved in the United States than they could possibly be in Africa. Mason believed that slavery did not need to be established or require a law to make it legal; it had already been established by God, as recorded in the Bible. It already existed in Africa: "The negro is as much property in Africa as the bullock or the ox". His position was that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery anywhere, and certainly not inKansas.^[15] Slavery was a condition, not an institution, by which he meant that Americans were not enslaving Africans, they were merely purchasing them from other Africans that had already enslaved them.

Mason wrote theFugitive Slave Law of 1850, arguably the most hated and openly-evaded Federal legislation in U.S. history. The whole idea of using "popular sovereignty" as a means to expand slavery into the Western territories, starting withKansas, leading to theKansas-Nebraska Act and the violence of theBleeding Kansas period, was hatched in Mason's Washington boarding house.^[14]: 65 Mason also was the chair of the ad-hoc Senate committee that investigatedJohn Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and wrote its report, informally known as the Mason Report.^[16]

Continuing the tradition of his mentorJohn C. Calhoun, whose last speech (1850) Mason read to the Senate when Calhoun was too sick to do so himself, Mason strongly believed states had the right to secede. Furthermore, the North's intolerance of their "peculiar institution", their "property rights" (the right to own human beings), left them no other choice than secession. He said he didn't need reasons to leave the Union, he needed a reason to stay in the Union.^[12]: 101

Mason strongly favored the South's "immediate, absolute, and eternal separation" if anti-slavery, Republican candidateJohn C. Frémont wereelected president in 1856.^[12]: 83

In 1861 Mason worked behind the scenes to enable Virginia's secession, remaining in the Senate because he could get information useful for the seceding states, a type of spy behind enemy lines.^[12]: 100 He and Virginia's other Senator,Robert Hunter, told the commissioners of the new Confederate states that Virginia would join the secession ifJefferson Davis were elected president of a Southern confederacy, but not if it were pro-slavery AlabamaFire-EaterWilliam L. Yancey, seen in Virginia as extreme. Davis was chosen as president three days later.^[12]: 103

Mason disappears from Senate activities in March. He and other Southern senators wereexpelled from the Senate on July 11, 1861, by a vote of 32 to 10, because "they were engaged in a conspiracy for the destruction of the Union and Government, or, with full knowledge of said conspiracy, had failed to advise the Government of its progress or aid in its suppression."^[17][18]

Mason became one of Virginia's representatives to the Provisional Confederate Congress from February 1861 through February 1862.^[19] However, his legislative duties were interrupted by a diplomatic assignment. While Mason sailed toward England as a Confederate envoy to Britain on the British mail steamerRMSTrent, the ship was stopped byUSSSan Jacinto on November 8, 1861. Mason and fellow Confederate diplomatJohn Slidell were confined inFort Warren inBoston Harbor. TheTrent Affair threatened to bring Britain into open war with the United States, despite triumphant rhetoric in the north. Even the cool-headed Lincoln was swept along in the celebratory spirit, but enthusiasm waned when he and his cabinet studied the likely consequences of a war with Britain. After careful diplomatic exchanges, they admitted that the capture was contrary to maritime law and that private citizens could not be classified as "enemy despatches". Slidell and Mason were released, and war was averted. The two diplomats set sail for England again on January 1, 1862.

Mason represented the Confederacy in England, bringing up Union blockades and unsuccessfully seekingdiplomatic recognition for the Confederacy. After Britain issued its refusal in 1863, he moved to Paris, continuing his unsuccessful search for a nation that would recognize or assist the Confederacy. He was there until April 1865.^[20]

When the Union army took over Winchester in 1862, at first "Selma", Mason's house, was requisitioned for regimental offices.^{[21]: 67–68} (Other Virginia houses named Selma are inEastville andLeesburg, Virginia.) The lower officers probably did not know who Mason was. But General Banks, formerly a congressman and then governor of Massachusetts, certainly knew. Learning of Mason's pro-slavery activism and his authorship of the hated Fugitive Slave Act, the soldiers, on their own initiative, set about destroying Selma. The roof came off first. Sometime later the walls were pulled down and everything burnable was chopped into firewood. They were so thorough that "from turret to foundation stone, not one stone remains upon another; the negro houses, the out-buildings [there was anice house], the fences are all gone, and even the trees are many of them girdled".^[22] According to Mason, the house was "obliterated".^[13] He never lived in Winchester again.

From 1865 until 1868 Mason lived in exile inCanada. After sanctions on Confederate officials were lifted, he returned to the United States, and bought theClarens Estate, on 26 acres (11 ha), today inAlexandria, Virginia. (In 2008 the house alone sold for over $8,000,000 (equivalent to $11,683,462 in 2024).)^{[14]: 258–259} He brought white servants from Canada, and went to some trouble to find others, as he did not want to hire any blacks; he believed free blacks to be "worse than worthless".^[14]: 260 He died at Clarens in 1871, and was interred in the churchyard ofChrist Church in Alexandria.^[1][2] His death was not noted by anyone outside his family.^[14]: 264

Mason married Eliza Margaretta Chew (1798–1874) on 25 July 1822 atCliveden inGermantown,Pennsylvania.^[1][2] The couple had eight children:^[1]

• Anna Maria Mason Ambler (31 January 1825 – 17 August 1863)^[1]
• Benjamin Chew Mason (1826–1847)^[1]
• Catharine Chew Mason Dorsey (24 March 1828 – 28 April 1893)^[1]
• George Mason (16 April 1830 – 3 February 1895)^[1]
• Virginia Mason (12 December 1833 – 11 October 1920)^[1]
• Eliza Ida Oswald Mason (10 August 1836 – 16 December 1885)^[1]
• James Murray Mason, Jr. (24 August 1839 – 10 January 1923)^[1]
• John A. Mason (17 November 1841 – 6 June 1925)^[1]

He was a grandson ofGeorge Mason (1725–1792); nephew ofGeorge Mason V (1753–1796);^[1][2] grandnephew ofThomson Mason (1733–1785);^[1][2] first cousin once removed ofStevens Thomson Mason (1760–1803) andJohn Thomson Mason (1765–1824);^[1][2] son of John Mason (1766–1849) and Anna Maria Murray Mason (1776–1857);^[1][2] first cousin ofThomson Francis Mason (1785–1838),George Mason VI (1786–1834), andRichard Barnes Mason (1797–1850);^[1][2] second cousin ofArmistead Thomson Mason (1787–1819),John Thomson Mason (1787–1850), andJohn Thomson Mason, Jr. (1815–1873);^[1][2] second cousin once removed ofStevens Thomson Mason (1811–1843);^[1][2] and first cousin thrice removed ofCharles O'Conor Goolrick.^[1][2]

• Sister Sarah Maria was the wife ofConfederategeneralAdjutantSamuel Cooper (general).
• Sister Anna Maria was the wife ofSydney Smith Lee-son ofHenry "Light Horse Harry" Lee; they were the parents ofConfederateMajor General and VirginiaGovernorFitzhugh Lee.
• Brother John T. married Catherine Macomb, daughter of Gen.Alexander Macomb, Jr., Commanding General of the army (1828–1841).

One perspective comes from Republican politicianCarl Schurz. His visit to Washington coincided with debate over theKansas-Nebraska Act.

Still another type was represented to me by Senator Mason of Virginia, a thick-set, heavily built man with a decided expression of dullness in his face. What he had to say appeared to me to come from a sluggish intellect spurred into activity by an overweening self-conceit. He, too, would constantly assert in manner, even more than in language, the superiority of the Southern slave-holder over the Northern people. But it was not the prancing pride of SenatorButler nor the cheery buoyancy of the fighting spirit ofToombs that animated him. It appeared rather to be the surly pretension of a naturally stupid person to be something better than other people, and the insistence that they must bow to his assumed aristocracy and all its claims. When I heard Senator Mason speak, I felt that if I were a member of the Senate, his supercilious attitude and his pompous utterances of dull commonplace, sometimes very offensive by their overbearing tone, would have been particularly exasperating to me.^[23]

A leading Republican SenatorCharles Sumner commented:

Among these hostile senators, there is yet another, with all the prejudices of the senator from South Carolina, but without his generous impulses, who, on account of his character. before the country, and the rancor of his opposition, deserves to be named. I mean the senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason], who, as the author of the Fugitive Slave Bill, has associated himself with a special act of inhumanity and tyranny. Of him I shall say little, for he has said little in this debate, though within that little was compressed the bitterness of a life absorbed in the support of Slavery. He holds the commission of Virginia; but he does not represent that early Virginia, so clear to our hearts, which gave to us the pen of Jefferson, by which the equality of men was declared, and the sword of Washington, by which Independence was secured; but he represents that other Virginia, from which Washington and Jefferson now avert their faces, where human beings are bred as cattle for the shambles, and where a dungeon rewards the pious matron who teaches little children to relieve their bondage by reading the Book of Life. It is proper that such a senator, representing such a State, should rail against Free Kansas.^[24]

• List of United States senators expelled or censured

• Gewalt, Gerard W. (2015).Clashing Dynasties Charles Francis Adams and James Murray Mason in the Fiery Cauldron of the Civil War.North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.ISBN 9781519347916.

• Owsley, Frank Lawrence.King Cotton Diplomacy, Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1931).
• Young, Robert W. (1998).Senator James Murray Mason : defender of the old South.University of Tennessee Press.ISBN 087049998X.

• "Mason, James Murray" .Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
• "Mason, James Murray" .The New Student's Reference Work . 1914.

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