Browse Items (739 total)

Mason speaks in defense of slavery, and in opposition to letter from a group of "New England Clergy" voicing religious and moral objections to slavery, and to legislative efforts to defend it.

Considering the interests of his constituents, in particular the financial losses they suffered due to escaped slaves being closer to free soil than a vast majority of the other slave states, Mason sought to pass the Fugitive Slave Law in order to…

Mason briefly comments on the prospect of the Minnesota territory and the Kansas territory being admitted into the Union.

Mason briefly elaborates on his understanding of slavery as a legal concept under Federal/Constitutional law. Slavery, preexisting the creation and authority of the Constitution, is according to Mason not created from its clauses, but merely…

On January 29th, 1850, Henry Clay rose to introduce a series of measures intended to resolve the divisive “slavery question” once and for all.

Selections of a debate between Salmon Chase of Ohio and James Mason of Virginia over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Combined Northern and Southern Democrat votes pushed the bill through both houses, and President Franklin Pierce signed it into law on May…

A contemporary description of James Murray Mason as a defender of the "conservative" aspects of the current government, as well as reactions to President Franklin Pierce's December 2nd 1856 message to Congress.

Mason comments on the debates that arose in the Senate over the secession crisis.

A tense exchange between Senator Mason of Virginia and Senator Cameron of Pennsylvania reveals the chasm of division that had consumed the nation.

The speech of Senator James M. Mason to the United States Congress on the rights of Citizens and their ability to move "property," i.e., black slaves, to the western territories not yet organized or admitted as states in the Union.