We The People celebrate the 227th year of the Constitution of the United States on Sept. 17-23. This amazing document has served our country well.

George Mason, born of English parents in Fairfax, Virginia, a descendant of a Royalist family, was a friend and neighbor of George Washington.

Mason and Washington had written the famous Fairfax Resolves which called for unity among the Colonies, a Continental Congress and a joint colonial defense. The Resolves stated the principle over which the Revolution was fought: Taxation without representation is tyranny!

George Mason was a plantation owner; he was neither a politician, nor a lawyer, nor did he attend college, but was appointed to the committee to draw up a bill of rights and a constitution May 17, 1776, at the Capitol in Williamsburg, Virginia. After careful research and reading the Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights, the English Bill of Rights and the English Act of Settlement, George Mason formulated the Virginia Bill of Rights, a radically liberal document. It summed up boldly, and committed to writing, concepts of human freedom that had been slowly developing through the ages but had never before dared be proposed as the individual rights of man. On June 12, 1776, less than four weeks after his arrival, the Virginia Bill of Rights was adopted.

In 1787, although racked by chronic illness at 62, Mason left his home in Gunston Hall on the Potomac where he lived rearing his nine children and again answered the call to duty at Philadelphia, where he assumed an active role in drafting the Constitution of the United States. Through his tireless campaign, the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were included in the Constitution. Thus protection of individual freedom and of the sovereign rights of people was assured through the tireless efforts of this great patriot, George Mason.

Julie Cordova, Constitution Week Chairman

Sarah Platt Decker Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution

Durango