Further reading

• Former Governors: Stevens Thomson Mason, Michigan Historical Museum

He also came of legal age in 1832, casting his first ballot as a voter on October 23 for Austin E. Wing. Though his party's candidate lost the election, the campaign produced a slogan which helped bring Stevens T. Mason to America's front pages. The Ann Arbor Emigrant coined the phrase, haughtily referring to Wing as "a protégé of the Boy Governor." Though Mason despised this epithet, it remained with him as long as he held office in Michigan. It so angered him that when he discovered the editor of the Ann Arbor newspaper on a Detroit street, Mason attacked him and gave him quite a beating with his fists. This story was reprinted widely in New York and Boston and Washington. City editors got it out of the Ann Arbor Argus, a rival paper whose editor chuckled, declaring that the ". . . stripling, the Boy Governor, if you please, was man enough to give him a sound cuffing."

• The Boy Governor: Stevens T. Mason and the Birth of Michigan Politics, Don Faber, University of Michigan Press, 2012

The Boy Governor tells the complete story of this dominant political figure in Michigan's early development. Capturing Mason's youthful idealism and visionary accomplishments, including his advocacy for a strong state university and legislating for the creation of the Soo Locks, this biography renders a vivid portrait of Michigan's first governor—his conflicts, his desires, and his sense of patriotism. This book will appeal to anyone with a love of American history and interest in the many, larger-than-life personalities that battled on the political stage during the Jacksonian era.

• Wikipedia: Stevens T. Mason