{"product_id":"george-mason-gordon-j-mackenzie-9798181518087","title":"George Mason: Architect of the Bill of Rights","description":"\u003cp\u003eGeorge Mason helped shape American liberty, then refused to sign the Constitution because he believed it did not protect liberty enough.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1776, Mason drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, one of the most influential rights documents of the revolutionary era. Its language of inherent rights, popular sovereignty and restrained government helped shape the American rights tradition and later echoed in the federal Bill of Rights.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYet Mason was also one of the founding generation's most difficult figures. He was a private Virginia planter drawn reluctantly into public life, a critic of concentrated power, a critic of the slave trade, and a slaveholder whose own life contradicted the fullest meaning of the rights he declared.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Mason helped debate the structure of the new federal government. But when the Constitution emerged without a bill of rights, and with compromises over slavery he found dangerous and morally troubling, he refused to sign. His dissent did not stop ratification, but it helped make amendments politically unavoidable.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeorge Mason: Architect of the Bill of Rights\u003c\/b\u003e tells the story of a founder who shaped the language of American freedom from outside the circle of constitutional victory. It follows his world at Gunston Hall, his role in Virginia's revolutionary politics, his demand for written rights, his uneasy relationship with slavery, and his final refusal at Philadelphia.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a portrait of a burdened founder: principled, severe, reluctant, brilliant and deeply compromised. Mason's life reminds us that liberty was not only signed into being. It was also demanded by those who refused to sign.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Gordon J. MacKenzie\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798181518087\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/14\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 272\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.73lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.68d","brand":"Gordon J. MacKenzie","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49084233711871,"sku":"9798181518087","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/george-mason-gordon-j-mackenzie-9798181518087","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}