The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 11, July 1907 - April, 1908 Page: 164
vii, 320 p. : maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Texas Historical Association Quarterly.
Handsome in person and courtly in manners, with fine literary
and classical attainments, General Mason was well equipped in
more than one respect for the delicate and difficult negotiations
he was about to undertake. And, as he reminded the company
later, he "possessed advantages of position," both in the United
States and in Mexico, "from friendships and intimacies of a per-
sonal and political character which few could occupy." He had
inherited the friendships of his father, an early ornament of the
United States Senate; he had shared the intimacies of his brother,
also a Virginia Senator, and one of the most popular men of his
State, and he was already, in the early thirties, a well-known figure
in Washington's political and social circles. In New York, the
business metropolis, as Washington was the political capital of the
Union, General Mason was equally at home, his wide acquaintance
at these two centres thus embracing the leading men of his time.
He had been employed, with other gentlemen as his associates, in
conferences with the Seneca Indians of New York, with whom that
State had treaties, his office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs in
Michigan giving him a large acquaintance with this subject. Later,
under Tyler's administration, he was to attempt for the Indians
of the South-the Cherokees-what he had essayed for those of
the North, employing all his abilities to secure to the ill-used red
men their treaty rights.
As an able lawyer, moreover, General Mason's services were es-
pecially valuable to the colonization company whose attorney he now
became. Unfortunately, his letters to the trustees in 1831, 1832,
1833, and 1834, up to the date of the resignation of his agency,
can not now be found. A list of them only is among his papers.
But several of the letters of the company to General Mason are
extant.
The first of these, written before his final acceptance of the trust,
is endorsed "Instructions, Private," and is dated "New York, April
6, 1831." General Mason had, apparently, submitted his "views"
on a subject probably discussed by him orally with the trustees of
the company, the question of "the purchase of the Texas by the
United States." This letter is a most interesting paper and unfolds
the hopes and expectations of the company, doubtless shared already
by many other Americans, that Texas should become a part of the
Union. The "jurisdiction," the trustees write to General Mason,164
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 11, July 1907 - April, 1908, periodical, 1908; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101045/m1/168/?rotate=90: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.