The political dispute between Mason and McCarthy, mirrored in the pages of _The Genius of Liberty_, was fated to resolve itself into a tragedy that shook county and Commonwealth to their roots and caused no small sensation throughout the youthful Republic. General Armistead Thomson Mason of Selma,[142] a grandson of Thomson Mason, was a graduate of William and Mary College, a veteran of the War of 1812 and a Senator of the United States from Virginia as well as the leader of the Democratic party in Loudoun. Opposed to him as a Federalist was his cousin, Colonel John Mason McCarty, a grandson of George Mason of Gunston Hall, a descendant of old Daniel McCarthy of Westmoreland[143] and who then occupied Raspberry Plain. For a long time there had been political rivalry and bickering between the two men and when Mason introduced a bill in the Senate to permit Loudoun Quakers, when drafted for military services in war-time, to furnish substitutes by the payment of $500 apiece, McCarthy seized upon its political possibilities and promptly accused him of cowardice. The issue flared in the political campaign then on and, to add to the fire, Mason challenged McCarty's vote at the polls. Some accounts say that this so incensed McCarthy, described as being generally a good-natured individual with a strong sense of humour but also with a temper that upon occasion would break out beyond bounds, that he thereupon, at the polling place, defied Mason to personal combat, in his anger naming the weapons, contrary to a universally recognized rule of the code. Mason decided to ignore the matter, McCarthy taunted him in the public prints and although Mason's side had been defeated at the election, the affair gradually might have blown over and been forgotten had not Mason, returning from a journey to Richmond, by evil chance found himself a fellow stagecoach passenger with his old friend and superior officer, General Andrew Jackson. The matter of the quarrel with McCarthy, in due course, came up for discussion and Jackson, ever a fire-eater himself, is said to have told Mason with some brusqueness that he should not let the matter drop. On his return, therefore, Mason sent his cousin a letter in which he said he has resigned his commission for the sole purpose of fighting McCarthy and "I am now free to accept or send a challenge or to fight a duel. The public mind has become tranquil, and all suspicion of the further prosecution of our quarrel having subsided, we can now terminate it without being arrested by the civil authority and without exciting alarm among our friends." He informed his opponent that he had arranged his family affairs and was "extreemly anxious to terminate once and forever this quarrel." How recklessly eager was his wish was shewn by his instructions to his seconds to agree to any terms at any distance--to pistols, muskets or rifles "to three feet--his pretended favourite distance, or to three inches, should his impetuous courage prefer it."