Dawson was born near Edenton in Chowan County, North Carolina.
[5][6][7] Dawson represented Bertie County in the state constitutional conventions of 1788 and 1789.
[8] He was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons (now called the House of Representatives) in 1791 and was a member of the committee which was appointed to choose a site for the new state capital, Raleigh, that same year.
Dawson was elected to the 3rd United States Congress in the election of February 15, 1793, a three-way race in which he, as the Anti-Federalist candidate, defeated two Federalists: Stephen Cabarrus (Speaker of the State House) and William Cumming.
His obituary, printed in the North Carolina Journal on February 1, 1796, stated that Dawson died on January 16, 1796[3] but the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, which lists his middle name as "Johnson," puts his death at 1798.