Charles
Mason of Iowa
by Kenneth L. Lyftogt
While on vacation in Virginia this summer I was able to visit the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. The museum was then hosting a full floor exhibit dedicated to General Robert E. Lee. One of the biographical pieces in the exhibit mentioned that Lee had, in 1829, been graduated from West Point with the honor of being ranked second in his class. After reading this another visitor asked, "If Lee was second, who was first in the class?"
The answer to that question takes one to Iowa and a man named Charles Mason.
Mason was born in the state of New York in 1804 and entered West Point in 1825 where he earned an exemplary record as a student, graduating first in the class of 29. Mason served two years in the army as instructor of engineering at West Point and then resigned to become a prominent New York lawyer, writer, and editor for the Evening Post. In 1836, Mason traveled west to the Wisconsin Territory where he served as U.S. Attorney. In 1838, when the Territory of Iowa was created from the Wisconsin Territory, Mason was appointed Chief Justice of the new Supreme Court of Iowa, he was thirty-three years old.
The first case to come to the court was perhaps its most significant, the case addressed the issue of slavery in Iowa, and the future of an African-American named Ralph. By the terms of the Compromise of 1820 (The Missouri Compromise) territories north of Missouri's northern border were to be oft limits to slavery, but how that was to directly effect slaves and their masters was not clear. Could a master take a slave to Iowa and have that property protected? Or, could a slave living in Iowa claim freedom under the terms of the Compromise of 1820?
Ralph, a Missouri slave, had been permitted by his master to work in Iowa in order to earn enough money to purchase his own freedom. When Ralph was unable to earn sufficient funds his master demanded that the Iowa Territory return him to bondage. Ralph, in turn, took legal steps to retain his liberty, his defense being that as he was living in free land he was a free man. The case was taken to Iowa's Supreme Court.
The court ruled in favor of Ralph, taking the position that when Ralph was allowed to become a resident of the free Iowa Territory he could no longer be considered as slave property and his master could not force his return to Missouri. Mason wrote the court's decision which said, in part:
When the slave-owner... illegally restrains a human being of his liberty, it is proper that the laws, which should extend equal protection to men of all colors and conditions, should exert their remedial interposition.
The Iowa decision was negated in 1857 by the US Supreme Court in the famous Dred Scott decision which held that slaves had no rights and that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had been unconstitutional. The Dred Scott decision was a severe blow to the anti-slavery movement but as far as Iowa was concerned Mason's 1838 decision had long since had its effect, Iowa was a free state, and when the Civil War tore the nation apart Iowa was a Union state.
Kenneth L. Lyftogt
is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Northern Iowa,
Cedar Falls.