Online Encyclopedia

JOHN YOUNG MASON (1799-1859)

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Originally appearing in Volume V17, Page 840 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JOHN YOUNG MASON (1799-1859)  ,
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American
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political leader and diplomatist, was born in Greenesville county, Virginia, on the 18th of
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April 1799 . Graduating at the university of North Carolina in 1816, he studied law in the famous
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Litchfield (
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Connecticut) law school, and in r829 was admitted to practice in Southampton county, Virginia . He served in the Virginia house of delegates in 1823—1827, in the state constitutional convention of 1829—1830, and from 1831 to 1837 in the
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National House of Representatives, being chairman of the committee on
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foreign affairs in 1835—1836 . He was secretary of the
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navy in President Tyler's
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cabinet (1844—1845), and was attorney-general (1845—1846) and secretary of the navy (1846—1849), succeeding George Bancroft, under President Polk . He was president of the Virginia constitutional convention of 1851, and from 1853 until his
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death at Paris on the 3rd of
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October 1859, was
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United States minister to France . In this capacity he attracted attention by wearing at the court of
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Napoleon III. a
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simple
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diplomatic
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uniform (for this he was rebuked by Secretary of State W . L . Marcy, who had ordered American ministers to
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wear a plain civilian costume), and by joining with James Buchanan and
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Pierre Soule, ministers to
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Great Britain and Spain respectively, in
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drawing up (Oct . 1854) the famous Ostend Manifesto . Hawthorne called him a " fat-brained, good-hearted, sensible old man "; and in politics he was a typical Virginian of the old school, a state's rights Democrat, upholding
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slavery and hating abolitionism .

End of Article: JOHN YOUNG MASON (1799-1859)
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