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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—VirginiaJames Murray MASON
(1798-1871)
Senate Years of Service:
1847-1861Party: DemocratMASON, James Murray, a
Representative and a Senator from Virginia; born on Analostan
Island, Fairfax County, Va. (now Theodore Roosevelt Island,
Washington, D.C.), November 3, 1798; studied under a private tutor
and at an academy at Georgetown, D.C.; graduated from the
University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia in 1818 and from the law
department of William and Mary College at Williamsburg in 1820;
admitted to the bar and practiced in Winchester, Va., in 1820 and
1821; delegate to the Virginia constitutional convention in 1829;
member, State house of delegates 1826-1832, with the exception of
1827-1828; presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1832;
elected as a Jackson Democrat to the Twenty-fifth Congress (March
4, 1837-March 3, 1839); elected as a Democrat to the United States
Senate in 1847 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Isaac S.
Pennybacker; reelected in 1850 and 1856 and served from January 21,
1847, until March 28, 1861, when he withdrew; expelled from the
Senate for support of the rebellion on July 11, 1861; served as
President pro tempore of the Senate during the Thirty-fourth and
Thirty-fifth Congresses; chairman, Committee on Claims (Thirtieth
Congress), Committee on the District of Columbia (Thirty-first
Congress), Committee on Foreign Relations (Thirty-second through
Thirty-sixth Congresses), Committee on Naval Affairs (Thirty-second
Congress); delegate from Virginia to the Provisional Congress of
the Confederacy; appointed commissioner of the Confederacy to Great
Britain and France and while on his way to his post was taken from
the British mail steamer Trent November 8, 1861, and confined in
Fort Warren, Boston Harbor; released in January 1862; proceeded to
London and represented the Confederacy until its downfall in April
1865; resided in Canada after the close of the war until 1868, when
he returned to Virginia; died at “Clarens,” near the
city of Alexandria, Va, April 28, 1871; interment in Christ Church
Episcopal Cemetery, Alexandria, Va.
Bibliography
American National Biography; Dictionary of American
Biography; Young, Robert W. Senator James Murray Mason:
Defender of the Old South. Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1998; Bugg, James L., Jr. “The Political Career of
James Murray Mason: The Legislative Phase.” Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Virginia, 1950.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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