Matthew Mason is a professor of history at Brigham Young University.  His most recent book, from which the research presented today is taken, is Seeking the High Ground: Slavery and Political Conflict in the British Atlantic World (University of Virginia Press, 2025). He is also the author of Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett (University of North Carolina Press, 2016); and Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). He has published articles in a variety of journals, including the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, the Journal of the Civil War Era, American Nineteenth Century History, and Slavery and Abolition. He has co-edited books including John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary with David Waldstreicher (Oxford University Press, 2017); and Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation with John Craig Hammond (University of Virginia Press, 2008). The Omohundro Institute Press will publish another volume co-edited with David Waldstreicher, Somerset v. Steuart: Law, Politics, and Slavery in North America, later this year.
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