Hand-colored mezzotint on paper; after Noel Le Mire (French, 1724—93), after Jean Baptiste Le Paon (French, 1738—85), after Charles Willson Peale; sheet: 14 1/2 in x 10 3/8 in; 36.8 cm x 26.4 cm. Published in London. Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium, MA.
Washington, front, is holding the Declaration of Independence; his slave-valet, Billy Lee — nearly as good a horseman as Washington — is rear.
[George] Mason’s obvious legacy is in his contribution to America’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence through the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Constitution through his role at the Philadelphia Convention, and the Bill of Rights through his dogged opposition to a Constitution without one. Mason may have taken a circumscribed view of the rights he advocated — limiting the right of representation to white men or restricting freedom of the press to a ban on prior restraint — but he put words on paper that could be given more expansive meanings by later generations.