Quote of the Day (John Quincy Adams, on the Deaths of His Father and Thomas Jefferson)

“[Tavernkeeper John] Merrill told me that he had come this morning out from Baltimore, and was informed there that my father died on the fourth of this Month, about five o’clock in the afternoon. From the Letters which I had yesterday received this event was so much expected by me, that it had no sudden and violent effect on my feelings— My father had nearly closed the ninety-first year of his life: A life illustrious in the Annals of his Country, and of the World— He had served to great and useful purpose his Nation, his Age, and his God— He is gone, and may the blessing of Almighty Grace have attended him to his Account— I say not, may my last End be like his! it were presumptuous— The time, the manner, the coincidence with the decease of Jefferson, are visible and palpable marks of divine favour, for which I would humble myself in grateful and silent adoration before the Ruler of the Universe— For myself all that I dare to ask is that I may live the remnant of my days in a manner worthy of him from whom I came, and at the appointed hour of my maker die as my father has died; in peace with God and man, sped to the regions of futurity with the blessings of my fellow men.”—John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), Sixth President of the United States, diary entry for July 9, 1826, in Diaries 1821-1848, edited by David Waldstreicher (2017)

Many Americans felt similarly to John Quincy Adams: that the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both on the 50^th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, were “visible and palpable marks of divine favour” on the United States.

Many of my readers will know that Jefferson had died at 12:50 pm, and that John Adams—who had reconciled with his longtime friend turned political rival the decade before—passed away later in the afternoon, unaware of what had happened in Virginia, with the words, “Jefferson still survives.”

Fewer people will know that, because of the still-slow state of overland communication in those days, John Quincy Adams, in Washington, was unaware of Jefferson’s death in Charlottesville 117 miles away. And it would not be for another three days when John Quincy learned of his father’s death at the family home in Massachusetts, 447 miles away.

When John Quincy Adams passed 22 years later, the news spread far more quickly, because the first links between major Eastern cities had been established for the telegraph, which Samuel Morse had publicly demonstrated in 1844. (See this 1999 C-Span clip for how the new invention was used so dramatically for what became a true “media event.”)

The younger Adams—who, like his father (and unlike Jefferson), was turned out of the White House after one miserable term—did indeed, as he hoped, “live the remnant of my days in a manner worthy of him from whom I came.” As the last prominent living link to the American Revolution, he lent tremendous prestige to the antislavery cause.

He was, in fact, engaged in another front in his struggle against slavery—a House of Representatives vote related to the Mexican War—when he was felled by a fatal stroke. 

By this time, this former President, after a long public career marked by controversy, was hailed as “Old Man Eloquent” by admirers and even recognized by opponents as a debater and legislator of formidable passion and shrewdness.

In its way, his last words were as memorable as those of his revered father: “This is the last of earth, but I am composed."

(The image accompanying this post is a detail from John Trumbull's 1818 painting of the Committee of Five presenting their draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. From left to right, the figures are: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.)

Song Lyric of the Day (Francis Hopkinson, Sending Up Redcoat Readiness in the Revolution)

“A soldier stood on a log of wood,
               And saw a thing surprising.
 
              As in amaze he stood to gaze,
               The truth can't be denied, sir,
              He spied a score of kegs or more
               Come floating down the tide, sir.
 
              A sailor too in jerkin blue,
               This strange appearance viewing,
              First damned his eyes, in great surprise,
               Then said, ‘Some mischief's brewing.
 
              "These kegs, I'm told, the rebels hold,
               Packed up like pickled herring;
              And they're come down to attack the town,
               In this new way of ferrying.’ 
 
              The soldier flew, the sailor too,
               And scared almost to death, sir,
              Wore out their shoes, to spread the news,
               And ran till out of breath, sir.”— American polymath and signer of the Declaration of Independence Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), “The Battle of the Kegs,” originally published in 1778, reprinted in American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, edited by David S. Shields (2007)
 
Faithful reader, if you’ve been reading this blog long enough and frequently enough, you’ll notice that I open and close the workweek with a humorous quote, on the reasonable supposition that everybody needs a laugh as they start their jobs on Monday and once they make it to Friday. I find no reason to change that pattern as we begin celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
 
If you read anything at all about that document and the American Revolution in general (which I hope you will), nearly all of it will be very sober. And I’ll provide a bit of that over the weekend myself.
 
But human nature doesn’t change that much over the centuries, and the men and women who created this country liked to drink and laugh as much as we do. I think they would have nodded in agreement with a bibulous fellow writer on my college newspaper, when hearing a recent article described as “very sober,” remarked, “Gee, I hate anything sober!”
 
So did Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence whom I think you and I would have liked to hang with. A blog post of mine from 18 years ago described the general arc of the career of this witty Renaissance Man of the Revolution, but his part in depicting one incident in the war deserves a fuller explanation.
 
If the rhythm of his verses above sounds familiar, it should: they’re written to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” Modern Americans associate that tune with patriots playing it on fife and drum on the way into battle, but it began a few decades before the war, with British doctor Richard Schuckburg creating a straw man with a colonist who was both a provincial hick and a pretentious fop.
 
By the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord, according to this account of the song on the Website of The Kennedy Center, the colonists were throwing the insult back, singing the tune derisively at the fleeing redcoats.
 
Nearly three years later, Hopkinson decided to make further use of the tune’s melody. You can see from the verses I’ve quoted that the lyrics are in ballad form, as capable of being sung as read.
 
What he was doing was rather audacious: taking a failed patriot military operation and, instead of being defensive about it, using it to mock vaunted British heroics.
 
In my high school, if you mentioned “The Battle of the Kegs,” some rowdy classmates might have seen it as a dare to finish off libations at a party. 

But in the American Revolution, it referred to a real patriot tactic in January 1778: to float explosive barrels at British ships. The colonists needed to try something: the British had captured and made themselves comfortable in Philadelphia, the capital of the young republic.
 
The whole thing was a big dud: no British ships blew up. But Hopkinson used the opportunity to satirize the redcoats’ panic and overreaction to the unknown objects coming their way.
 
Ultimately, the American Revolution would have to be settled by other means. But then as now, satire directed at an enemy possessing overwhelming power was necessary to sustain the spirit for the larger contest.

Quote of the Day (Woody Holton, on Extending the Declaration Into ‘A Universal Declaration of Human Rights’)

“Phrases that had seemed unimportant to the [Continental] Congress caught the attention of Americans who hated slavery. Before the year 1776 was out, Lemuel Haynes, a free Black soldier serving in the Continental Army, had drafted an essay called ‘Liberty Further Extended.’ He opened by quoting the Declaration of Independence’s offhand assertions that ‘all men are created equal’ and ‘that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.’ By highlighting these claims, Haynes began the process of shifting the focus and meaning of the Declaration of Independence, from Congress’ ordinance of secession to a universal declaration of human rights. That effort was later carried forward by other abolitionists—the only Americans whose initial reactions to the Declaration focused on its equality and rights clauses—joined later by women’s rights advocates and eventually by freedom lovers all over the world.”—Bancroft Prize-winning historian Woody Holton, Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (2021)

This Day in Medical History (Benjamin Rush, Reforming Doctor Who Signed Declaration of Independence, Born)

Dec. 24, 1745—Benjamin Rush, a doctor at the forefront of intellectual and reform movements in the first four decades of the American republic—including signing the Declaration of Independence—was born in Byberry Township, Penn. (The date used here was according to the Julian Calendar that prevailed in England and its colonies at the time.)

Last week, I wrote a post about another underrated Founding Father: John Jay. But, in its way, Rush’s career was more varied, more interesting—and more tragic. After all, how many other figures are considered so crucial to the origins of abolitionism, prison reform, psychiatry, eugenics, and substance abuse treatment—or been forced to put many of his concepts into practice by treating his own mentally ill son?

As a member of the Continental Congress whose activities ranged across multiple fields, Rush may have been surpassed only by two friends who also signed the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. He embodied the best notions of the American Enlightenment for his belief in republicanism, toleration, scientific progress, and the elevating impact of education.

Yet, though regarded as the most famous and brilliant American physician of his time, his renown faded somewhat in the two centuries after his death for three reasons: his relatively brief political career, a longtime lack of access to his copious writings, and out-of-context misunderstandings about some of the more controversial aspects of his medical career.

In recent years, Rush has become the focus of some long-overdue scholarly attention. First, Stephen Fried’s highly acclaimed biography of the doctor appeared two years ago. Second, the current COVID-19 pandemic has led scholars to re-examine Rush’s controversial role in a major epidemic of his career: a Yellow Fever outbreak in Philadelphia.

Though not the sole physician who signed the Declaration, Rush was the only one to receive a university education in medicine (the College of Philadelphia, then the University of Edinburgh).

From his late 20s on, he became active in politics: persuading the recent English immigrant Thomas Paine to call his incendiary pro-revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense; discussing how to advance the new movement while dining at Philadelphia’s City Tavern with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington; and, after signing the Declaration, leaving his pregnant wife behind to serve as physician in chief of the military hospital of the Middle Department of the Continental Army.

In the latter frenetic period, Rush was a trusted confidante and admirer of Washington: witnessing him clutching a page saying “Victory or death” (the watchword for the attack) before crossing the Delaware at the Battle of Trenton; treating the dying Gen. Hugh Mercer at the Battle of Princeton; slipping out of the clutches of the British after being briefly captured at the Battle of Brandywine; and writing an essay on  improving soldiers’ medical care that Washington pressed on his subordinates.

But before long, Rush would also display the habit of caustic, impolitic and sometimes indiscreet writing that attracted a host of enemies. He became appalled by medical treatment of soldiers at the hands of his superior, John Shippen, then at the Continental Congress for clearing him of wrongdoing.

Rush made an even more significant enemy when he penned an anonymous letter to Patrick Henry that was critical of Washington. Henry disregarded Rush’s plea to burn the letter immediately, instead passing it along to the general. Washington was so angry at Rush’s duplicity that the doctor felt compelled to resign his post.

In the 1780s, students rather than soldiers became the primary focus of Rush’s attention. At the University of Pennsylvania, he served in a number of capacities over the years, including professor of chemistry, professor of the theory and practice of medicine, and professor of the institutes of medicine and clinical practice. Unlike many of the other Founding Fathers, Rush was egalitarian in outlook, believing that a good education should be enough to qualify candidates for public office.

All the while he was lecturing to enthralled students (more than 3,000 in his 45-year career), Rush was maintaining a vigorous publication schedule (an estimated 85 significant publications, including the first American chemistry textbook) and becoming what would now be thought of as a public intellectual on health and educational matters:

* He founded Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania (1783), Franklin College (now Franklin and Marshall) at Lancaster (1787), and the College of Physicians (also 1787);

* He sought, at Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital, to get better funding for the mentally ill, and to stop the shameful practice of warehousing them;

* He called for treating addiction as a medical problem years before this became standard practice;

* He sought to reconcile two modes of beliefs that he heartily embraced: rationalism and religion;

* He proposed a national system of public education with a federal university to train public servants; and

* He advocated for the education of women.

On top of all these efforts, Rush not only called for an end to slavery but, differing from the conventional wisdom of the time, declared that there was nothing physically different about African-Americans that would prevent them from achieving as much as whites.

Unfortunately, Rush endangered his reputation for being in the vanguard of progressive thought—not to mention his professional credibility—by his role in Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793. (A thorough but critical examination of his role is provided by Robert L. North's "Benjamin Rush, MD: Assassin or Beloved Healer?" in a 2000 article for the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings.)

At the start of the epidemic, Rush’s standing with the public actually rose, as he was one of the few physicians even to stay in the city to treat patients. But no approach he tried with patients seemed to work.

At this point, recalling a 1744 medical paper, Rush hit on the expedient of bloodletting and purging. Even when that didn’t work, he only resorted to it all the more often. (Ironically, Rush had stumbled onto they key to yellow fever outbreaks—his notes refer at one point to “Moschetoes” that were “uncommonly numerous”—but he never made the connection to the disease’s origin.)

William Safire’s novel Scandalmonger (2000) takes the viewpoint of Rush’s enemies by depicting him as a "murderous quack" and "Dr. Death," but it leaves out an important bit of context: Nobody else at the time had the least idea of what caused the disease. But the damage to the esteemed doctor’s credibility was done. He felt compelled to withdraw from some of his positions, and even his practice suffered for a time.

Adams’ appointment of his old friend as Treasurer of the U.S. Mint enabled Rush to rebuild his reputation even as he re-entered public service. He remained wed, fatally, to his old idea on fever—when stricken with typhus in 1813, he instructed that he be treated through bloodletting and purging—but at his death, a grateful populace turned out en masse to pay tribute to one of Philadelphia’s most honored citizens.

In his 2018 biography, Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, Stephen Fried explained how the physician-patriot’s intimate connection to the leading lights of his time led to his relative undervaluation by decades of historians. At his death, descendants of several prominent families had reason not to have his correspondence or journal entries cited by biographers--materials that would have confirmed his central in the American Revolution:

*Jefferson’s family did not want airing of his skepticism about the divinity of Christ—opinions that could have been misconstrued to suggest he was an atheist—or his request to the doctor for the best way to treat his hemorrhoids;

*Adams’ descendants were sensitive about revealing the President's anguish over a son’s descent into and death from alcoholism—a pattern that repeated itself with one of the children of John Quincy Adams; and

*Rush’s family was not keen about divulging the reason behind his disrupted friendship with George Washington, now firmly established as the Father of His Country.

Even as he struggled with the personal tragedy of his son John--a physician who, after killing a friend in a duel, became so mentally unstable he needed to be placed under his father's care-- Rush, in his last decade, performed one of his greatest services to posterity by relentlessly urging old friends Adams and Jefferson to repair the breach that had developed because of their competition for the Presidency. 

That reconciliation not only helped heal old wounds between the proud old patriots but led to one of the most extraordinary bursts of correspondents among two ex-Presidents—creating a treasure trove that scholars have used since to better understand the extraordinary generation that produced such revolutionaries as Adams, Jefferson and mutual friend Rush.

This Day in Art History (Benjamin Franklin Waggishly Laments Bald Eagle as Symbol)

Jan. 26, 1784—Watching the rise of an American fraternal military organization with a mixture of trepidation and mockery from his diplomatic posting in France, Benjamin Franklin put his thoughts to paper about the bird symbol that the group chose for itself, inadvertently giving birth to an amusing story that has become an urban myth.

If you’re like me, you tried to catch the musical 1776 whenever it came on TV when you were growing up. If you weren’t lucky enough to see the show about the creation of the Declaration of Independence onstage, then, like me, you bought the soundtrack album and played it constantly. You might, in that case, recall one especially spirited scene created by playwright Peter Stone and lyricist-composer Sherman Edwards. 

In “The Egg,” Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, as they contemplate “playing midwives to an egg” (i.e., “the birth of a new nation,’ Franklin translates), hash out their differences over the bird to be chosen as the symbol of America. Jefferson, the junior and quietest member of the trio, is quickly drowned out when he suggests the dove. In a microcosm of the main action of the musical, the loudly insistent Adams carries the day for the eagle, “a majestic bird,” despite its rather fierce qualities.

But in the 50 years since the musical premiered on Broadway, audiences have chortled over Franklin’s defense of the turkey. Only one problem: Perhaps more than any other element in the show (even more than its depiction of the solemn Richard Henry Lee as a grinning Southern idiot), it’s a distortion of actual events and motives. 

One element in this comes from the thinnest of historical justifications: On the same day that the resolution for American independence passed in the Continental Congress, Franklin, Adams and Jefferson were commissioned by the other delegates to design a seal for the new nation, and, as they did onstage, each had his own ideas for it. But none involved a bird of any kind. 

The proposal they submitted in August 1776 went nowhere, as did others submitted by a second and third committee over the next six years. (Hmmm…nothing happening among our nation’s lawmakers. Stop me if this sounds familiar!) 

In 1782, Charles Thomson, the longtime secretary of the Congress, submitted a proposal that combined elements of the three committees’ work. But the bald eagle we know was not the handiwork of Franklin, Adams and Jefferson.

A 1962 New Yorker cover illustration by Anatole Kovarsky substituted a turkey for the bald eagle in the Great Seal. That planted one seed for the stage actions that took place by the end of the decade.

The basic rationale (though not the exact verbiage) used by Franklin in the play derives from his letter to daughter Sarah Bache, written 235 years ago today. When you read the first half of that explanation, it will certainly remind you of the scientist-politician’s denunciation of the eagle in the musical:

“Others object to the Bald Eagle, as looking too much like a Dindon, or Turkey. For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. With all this injustice, he is never in good case, but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank coward: the little king bird not bigger than a sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He is therefore by no means a proper emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America, who have driven all the king birds from our country…”

Okay, stop right there! What’s this “Cincinnati” stuff?

With the American Revolution winding down, Henry Knox, Washington’s Chief of Artillery, helped found The Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Continental Army. While one of the group’s aims—assisting former soldiers who had fallen on hard times—was charitable, another provision—heredity membership, to be passed down to descendants of veterans—struck observers such as Adams and Jefferson to be a portent for nobility and, therefore, an undermining of the republic in its crib.

But irony was Franklin’s dominant spirit, so rather than take on the group itself, he decided to mock its seal. With tongue in cheek, he went after all the reasons why the bird in the seal, the bald eagle, was so wrong for a group of veterans: notably, that it was cowardly. Why couldn’t the Cincinnati have tried a different bird?

“[I]n truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours, the first of the species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the ninth. He is besides, (though a little vain and silly tis true, but not the worse emblem for that) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”

This letter to his daughter was never sent: a Frenchman to whom Franklin showed it persuaded the 78-year-old diplomat to avoid involvement in another controversy. In fact, its contents would not be revealed until 1817, another 27 years after his death. In time, the dust-up over the Society of the Cincinnati faded, too. And there matters stood, for nearly another century and a half, until creative types, hoping to have some fun with our nation’s history, took Dr. Franklin literally.

For more details on this whole thing, I suggest that you read this post by Emily Sneff from the Declaration Resources Project blog, run by Harvard University.

Photo of the Day: Statue, Jefferson Memorial

The other night, while watching the first episode of Ken Burns’ PBS documentary, The Roosevelts, I noticed, in the background of a 1930s newsreel of Franklin Roosevelt at the dedication of Mount Rushmore, that the face of Thomas Jefferson was coming into view on the great rock in South Dakota. It reminded me of how the most important President of the 20^th century elevated a predecessor that he regarded as a crucial forerunner of his own advocacy of the common man. 

With each passing decade, that apotheosis of American’s third President has become more and more hotly debated, particularly in light of his views on the great American predicament: race. So, although I wrote briefly about the Jefferson Memorial in a prior post, that does not begin to exist what must be said about him. 

It may have been a trick of the early afternoon light that caused Rudulph Evans' bronze statue of Jefferson to appear dark when I photographed it on a visit to Washington in November 2013. But it is not an accident that Jefferson’s legacy itself looks darker than anyone could have predicted when Roosevelt helped mold the midcentury consensus surrounding the author of perhaps the most famous line in American history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

That quote is among several ones carved into the walls of the chamber surrounding the statue. Among those others are this one: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.” That latter sentence is part of the reason why millions the world over, in the nearly two centuries since Jefferson’s death (on the 50^th anniversary of American independence, no less), have looked to American democracy as a beacon in a dark world of legal and mental shacklement.

But the two sentences that immediately follow it, in Jefferson’s Autobiography, say just as much about why this country came to the agony of Charleston last month: “Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."

If your ideal is of an American government that values education as the key to an informed citizenry, that looks suspiciously on a standing army as a fiscal sinkhole and a threat to freedom of expression, that distrusts concentrated wealth, that constantly hails science over religion, then Jefferson is your man.

But Jefferson is also the man who lived off the fruit of others' labor, the first theorist of secession, and the forefather of segregation. Thomas Jefferson’s America, for better and worse, remains ours. 

For all those who, rather glibly, urge a cliched "national conversation" about race, the inevitable place to start is with Jefferson. Expect that conversation to be nothing less than ambivalent and painful.

Photo of the Day: Forgotten Founder

You’re looking at what I think may be the most approachable statue in our nation’s capital. I came across the George Mason Memorial by accident last November, when I was trying to reach the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. 

But I don’t think its subject, planter-patriot George Mason (1725-1792), would have minded in the least being in the shadow of the Tidal Basin monument to his fellow Virginian.

With no known painting from life existing of Mason, nobody knows how accurately this statue depicts the face and body of this all-but-forgotten major influence on the American Revolution and the early republic. 

But I can’t help but think that sculptor Wendy Ross has perfectly captured the personality that impressed virtually all who met him: friendly, engaged, but still, slightly removed from the world now visiting his doorstep. 

You have, after all, interrupted him in one of his favorite pursuits: reading in the garden that gave him a much-needed sense of tranquility. I photographed so much while down in Washington, but this particular image, I knew, was a necessity.

Mason’s vow to “risque the last Penny of my Fortune, and the last Drop of my Blood” for independence endeared him to younger patriots, including Washington, who saw him as a mentor, and Jefferson, who believed him to be "the wisest man of his generation." 

His most vibrant thought is echoed in this country’s seminal documents, notably this quote: "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights…namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty…and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

Sound familiar? Jefferson did a masterful job of editing that until he made the words sing in the Declaration of Independence. 

But, as historian Pauline Maier showed in American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, it was Mason’s original words, in his May 1776 draft for the Virginia Declaration of Rights, that were embodied in the initial state constitutions that sought to sum up the ideals of freedom that led them to separate from England. 

Moreover, his willingness to walk out of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 over its refusal to include a Bill of Rights created unstoppable pressure that resulted in the eventual passage of the first 10 amendments.

The Virginia aristocrat embodied what we would nowadays call gravitas. Enormously adept at keeping his plantation profitable (a skill that would elude fellow Virginians Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe), he was treasurer of the Ohio Company, an organization that invested in land located in the Ohio River Valley, and an influential member of the vestry at Washington’s Truro Parish.

Philip Mazzei, an Italian doctor who met him in 1773, might have exaggerated somewhat in likening him to Dante, Machiavelli, Galileo, or Newton. But when you trace influences on the most influential men of the early republic, Mason’s name appears repeatedly on the short list.

The setting of Ross’s statue, dedicated in 2002, illustrates both why so many were drawn to Mason, and to an extent, why he repeatedly drew back. You might have caught him while he’s reading, but now he’ll be happy to explain why those two books to his left should matter to you. And yet…there’s something in reserve. He is, after all, leaning back.

So much conspired to keep Mason where he was, at his estate, Gunston Hall. The ingeniously landscaped grounds that he himself surveyed and laid out find their counterpart in the Tidal Basin memorial site I visited, which was created as a Victorian garden, then redesigned as a pansy garden in 1929.

The cane to Mason’s right at the memorial tips you off to something else that kept him largely stationary: his medical condition. 

Traveling from Virginia to Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention might not sound like much to us, but to someone like Mason, who suffered increasingly from gout as the years went by, the experience was enormously painful.

Pain of an emotional kind also plagued Mason in the revolutionary period: His wife of two decades died while bearing him a child in 1773. The widower, distraught over losing a woman he had come to cherish, also now found himself, he said, playing the role not just of father but also mother to his children. (Nine managed to survive to adulthood.)

In the end, Mason shied away from heavier involvement with politics because he sensed how much it would cost. Nowhere was this borne home more forcefully than in Philadelphia in 1787. He was bothered not just by the lack of a bill of rights, but by accommodations made to the slave states. 

Despite owning numerous slaves himself, Mason disliked this system in which “Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant,” and he correctly predicted, “By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.” 

He could not have been more dismayed, then, when the convention ignored his advice to ban the slave trade immediately, as South Carolina and Georgia worked out a deal with the New England States that the institution would not be touched another 20 years.

Mason’s vehement disagreement on this and the lack of a bill of rights led him to reject a document he had worked to support until near the end of deliberations. It also drove a wedge between him and Washington that lasted through Mason’s death in 1792.

The original memorial for Mason had envisioned only a round bas relief in his honor, but Ross won out with her proposal for a full-figure representation. Mason did not found a country, like Washington, or even a political party, like Jefferson, and so the sculptor has not created a demigod of the American civic religion or even a man on horseback. 

But the representation here is unique: a patriot who comes off as someone you would love to spend the afternoon chatting away with, by which time you were bound to be infected by his love of ideas and his passion for liberty.