An obscure, slaveholding plantation owner who played a major role in making the Bill of Rights part of the Constitution and in the electoral system that produced a president who has been working to undermine those rights gets the spotlight for today’s #stampoftheday.

Issued on June 13, 1958, the 3-cent stamp features Gunston Hall, the home of George Mason IV who, along with George Washington, was owned more slaves than anyone in Fairfax County (VA). Located on a 550-acre planation located on the shore of the Potomac River, just down-river from Mount Vernon, the house was one of the largest and most ornate dwellings of its time. Built by a mix of free men and slaves under Mason’s supervision, the building was surrounded by tobacco fields worked by slaves.

Why, you might ask, was Mason and his home honored? The answer is that though he’s faded from view, Mason, a respected leader of American efforts to restrain British power before the Revolution, not only was often “in the room where it happened” but also helped make it happen. Notably, he played a major role in writing the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, which proclaimed the inherent rights of men, including the right to reform or abolish “inadequate” government. During the American Revolutionary War, Mason was a member of the powerful House of Delegates of the Virginia General Assembly but, to the irritation of Washington and others, he refused to serve in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, citing health and family commitments. However, in 1787, Mason he agreed to be one of his state’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention and traveled to Philadelphia, his only lengthy trip outside Virginia. There he played an important role in a key compromise, that has had – and continues to have – a tremendous impact: having representation in the House be based on each state’s population but giving each state two senators regardless of its population (and having each state’s votes in the electoral college be equal to the total number of senators plus representatives). This, of course, is what made it possible for Donald Trump to become president even though he lost the popular vote.

Despite his central role, Mason refused to back the constitution and actively fought against it when it came up for ratification in Virginia. He cited the lack of a bill of rights as his major objection. But he also objected to the fact that the document did not put immediate end to the importation of slaves. His concern here wasn’t a moral one. Rather, it appears his objection was financial– more slaves would lead to more tobacco plantations, which in turn would to a sharp decline in tobacco prices. Mason wanted the Constitution to require a supermajority vote for any legislation related to navigation, a key policy domain for people like him who relied on exports.

Despite his objections, Virginia ratified the Constitution. But because of his objections, backers of the new Constitution promised that if it were ratified, they would immediately move to amend the Constitution to include a Bill of Rights. And, in fact, James Madison, a fellow Virginian, introduced the Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the Constitution when the first U.S. Congress met in 1789. (They were adopted in 1791, a year before Mason died.)

Obscure after his death, Mason’s impact has come to be recognized, in the 20th and 21st centuries. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, for example, Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in 1980 that, “George Mason’s greatest contribution to present day Constitutional law was his influence on our Bill of Rights.” Moreover, the Marquis de Lafayette drew heavily on the Virginia Declaration of 1776 in drafting what became the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,” a seminal document from the French Revolution. (Ironically, Lafayette’s arrival in America was marked in a different stamp issued on this day in 1952).

So we’re left with the fact that the stamp honors a slaveowner driven in large measure by personal financial interests who, for whatever reason, not only played a central role in some of our most important Constitutional provisions but also the electoral system that has produced a President who seems hellbent on undermining key elements of Mason’s work.

Stay well, be safe (and sane), fight for justice and work for peace.