previous next  Hon. James Murray Mason, of ‘Mason & Slidell’
fame.  A Tribute to this exalted patriot by Hon. Henry A. Wise.
The Hon. James Murray Mason is no more. His death has already
been announced, but we deem it a pleasure, as well as a duty, to
take more than a cursory notice of the loss of such a man to the
once honored State, which he and his ancestors served so long
and so eminently, at a time when her glory was the chief pride
of her sons.  Descended from the Masons of Gunston, in Virginia,
and from the Murrays of Maryland, he was born November 3, 1798,
in the county of Fairfax, and after early boyhood was reared and
educated chiefly in the city of Philadelphia, with every
opportunity for attaining accomplishments of a high order. He
was a resident in a French family of superior refinement, and
was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, A. D. 1818.
Thus trained to the age of his majority he could not be other
than a gentleman, in the highest sense of that much abused term.
The son of Gener