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Section 15, 1776: The Virginia Convention

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On May 15, 1776, the Virginia Convention "resolved unanimously that the delegates appointed to represent this colony in General Congress be instructed to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent states . . . [and] that a committee be appointed to prepare a Declaration of Rights and . . . plan of government." R. H. Lee's resolution of June 7, 1776, implemented the first of these resolutions and precipitated the appointment of the committee to draw up the Declaration of Independence; the second proposal was carried out by the framing of Virginia's first state constitution, of which this declaration was an integral part. It is notable for containing an authoritative definition of the term militia in Section 13. …show more content…
The committee and the Convention made some verbal changes and added Sections 10 and 14. The Virginia Declaration of Rights served as a model for the U.S. Constitution’s later Bill of rights (the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution) and the Bills of Rights within several other state constitutions. It even went on to inspire some elements of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Thus, Mason also played a part in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. However, Mason along with Patrick Henry also a Virginian planter as well as statesman and orator (“give me liberty or give me death” ), believed that the initial Constitution presented for ratification created a too strongly centralized federal government and in the Virginia convention of 1788 refused to ratify it until assured that it would be open to immediate amendment with which it would the rights of the people against the Federal government as constituted were explicitly

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