George Mason

Thomas Jefferson called George Mason (1725–1792), “one of our truly great men.” So worried was he about the power of government, over individual citizens, that he refused to support the Constitution unless it had a Bill of Rights.

It wasn’t just the protection of minority rights which concerned him. He believed that too much power vested in a centralized, federal government could lead to corruption.

Because his position differed from that of other Founding Fathers, he is little known today even though the product of his thinking - especially regarding America’s Bill of Rights - is part of the fabric of the country he helped to create.