Posted on 10/05/2020 1:01:48 PM PDT by Ozguy1945
The anniversary of George Mason's death is coming up. on Wednesday.
His thoughts were pure, both of his times and ahead of them.
This bit of Word Art pays tribute.
Along with Patrick Henry, George Mason was a leading Anti-Federalist opposed to the replacing the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution.
Both believed that the Constitution would create a dangerously powerful central government. Prophets.
thanks
George Mason...Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 14, 1788.
Took a while.
The Articles were a mess, and they knew it.
Anyway, George Mason a great revolutionary.
I contracted it for artistic purposes .......
Patrick Henry was elected to be a delegate but refused to attend the Convention saying that he "smelt a rat." But later he supported the Federalist Party.
I missed the quote in your linked graphic...LOL...Great minds think alike...
“The Articles were a mess, and they knew it.”
They were. There was no excutive branch, only a figurehead “President of Congress”. No judicial branch. The Continental Congress ran everything. There was no taxing power, and the Continental dollar was virtually worthless. States squabbled over boundaries, trade between them was very difficult. The post Independence experiment in self government was headed for collapse.
But Anti-Federalists still favored reforming the Articles rather than replacing them with a strong central gov’t as proposed in the Constitution. One concession to the Anti-Federalists was the inclusion of a Bill of Rights to limit the power of the central gov’t. That might not have worked out as well as hoped.
The events that led to writing the Constitution began with Virginia farmer and former general George Washington wanting to build a canal along the Virginia side of the Potomac river back in 1785.
To do that some navigation disputes with Maryland had to be ironed out, so George invited Maryland officials to meet with Virginians at Mount Vernon. We call that “the Mount Vernon Conference”, the attendees probably didn’t call it anything.
Anyway that led a bigger meeting the next year at Annapolis with more delegates from more states, followed by the even bigger meeting in Philadelphia the year after that, which resulted in the Constitution. The Constitution owes its existence to a canal, one that never did get built.
Actually it was. The Patowmack Canal at Great Falls. Never amounted to too much, though. Stopped 1830.
Interesting points, though.
AFAIK only locks got built, never any actual canal like the C&O. The Patowmack/Potomac company ran into engineering problems to the west that were beyond their financial resources.
When the Erie opened up in New York it siphoned off a lot of the westbound traffic that the Patowmack company had hoped to get. IIRC the C&O took over the remains of the company, and then railroads began putting canals out of business.
Another bit of canal trivia since you seem to enjoy it like I do- the Watergate neighborhood down in Georgetown/DC took its name from an actual “water gate” on the C&O down where Rock Creek empties into the Potomac. Has something to do with a “tide lock” but I’m not sure how it works. I think the water gate or its ruins still exist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patowmack_Canal
Been on the Georgetown locks of the C&O (never mind elsewhere). The whole thing is very cool. I just love history and old stuff.
I lived in Arlington until I was 15. One of the last things I did before moving out west was bicycle up the C&O towpath to Harper’s Ferry and back. A day up and a day back. It was an adventure, but it was also July and really hot.
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