Item #4146 [George Mason Imploring John A. Washington III to Seize the Guns of Slaves and Free Blacks]. George Mason.
[George Mason Imploring John A. Washington III to Seize the Guns of Slaves and Free Blacks].
[George Mason Imploring John A. Washington III to Seize the Guns of Slaves and Free Blacks].

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[George Mason Imploring John A. Washington III to Seize the Guns of Slaves and Free Blacks].

Spring Bank, Virginia: 25 October, 1859. 8vo. 4 integral pp. of manuscript.

An urgent letter from one descendant of a founding father to another on a proposed plan to seize firearms from slaves and free blacks of Fairfax County, Virginia, in the aftermath of the 1859 John Brown raid a week earlier.

George Mason, grandson of the revolutionary statesman of the same name, writes this letter to John Augustine Washington III, a great grandnephew of George Washington, opening with the urgent pronouncement: “The Bearer Lemuel Taylor has come & informed me, that most of the Slaves & free Negroes about here, have Guns.” A former magistrate of Fairfax County, and now “powerless” to act in spite of thirty years of experience administering the law, Mason calls upon John A. Washington, his junior and an incumbent magistrate of Fairfax County, to preemptively seize all firearms held by slaves and free negroes. Paranoia pervades the letter: “[Y]ou may be sure that the Free Negroes who live on Woodlawn & about the other Yankee settlements there & around us here have every one Guns.” Mason is also deeply skeptical of others’ capacities to adequately handle the urgent situation, including other white slave-owning magistrates as well as Taylor himself, whom Mason describes as a “loud talking old fellow,” and whom he worries will leak information of the incipient raid Mason is urging upon Washington. While he relates several details provided by Taylor, he advises Washington to speak directly with Taylor himself, in order to gather more information concerning the whereabouts of guns possessed by slaves and free negroes—but to make sure this exchange takes place in absolute secrecy.

Mason suspects the families of present magistrates to be housing slaves with firearms. He writes: “These things are abominable at any time, but just now, they are really too bad to be borne.” Mason makes reference to Washington’s imminent departure (indeed, John would be the last family owner of Mount Vernon), but urges him not to resign from his commission as Magistrate. “Let me entreat you, my dear Sir, to take this matter in hand.” Mason draws on his past experiences coordinating successful raids of the same nature in 1838 and 1839, of which Taylor was a part; but he acknowledges the changed circumstances of a raid carried out now. Such circumstances include not only the implicit aftermath of John Brown's raid but also the cheaper price (and thus accessibility) of firearms and the presence of Yankee abolitionists in their county. He advises Washington at some length on how to organize his raid, stressing, first and foremost, to appoint “all native born men.” As was the case with the previous patrols, “the Law is now violated in the very Families of our present magistrates,” whom Mason is convinced are housing slaves with guns. Such a raid, he assures Washington, “will put everything in order in a few Days.”

Mason closes the letter by briefly recommending individuals to enlist for the patrol and advises against enlisting others (“The Potters are now engaged in keeping whiskey shops & of course they wish to keep in with the Negroes, to get their custom. Such conflicting interests are hardly compatible with duty to the Laws”). Mason, Washington’s elder, trusts the latter’s judgment in seeking the proper men for the task and wholly believes in his ability to swiftly carry out the task. “Our only hope, of having the Law enforced, is in you—we have no other Magistrate, that can be relied on.” In a nota bene, Mason urges for the patrol to use firearms if necessary and for them “to search all suspected places – White men’s Houses, as well as Blacks.” He also notes: “That old scamp Tumey I have long believed to be an agent of the abolitionists & do not doubt his House is often the scene of unlawful Assenblies, etc.”

By the time of John Brown’s execution, five weeks after this letter was written, the South's reaction to his raid entered into its second phase and the panic among southerners in its immediate aftermath, as witnessed in this letter, began to subside.

A fascinating letter written in the week immediately following John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry urging a raid to seize the guns of slaves and free blacks of Fairfax County, Virginia.

Item #4146

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