Declaration of Rights Around the World

On June 28th, 1776 Thomas Jefferson presented his Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress after weeks of writing and revisions and editing by the five member committee that included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.  It was not the first or the last time leaders felt the need to put pen to paper and establish the need to declare the rights of mankind.


1690 - John Locke's Second Treatise on Government:

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
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“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
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All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
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June 1776 - George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights
THAT all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. 

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
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July 1776 - Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence:
 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

1793 - Article 2 of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen:
The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

1876 - Declaration of the Rights of Women (National Women Suffrage Association)
We ask of our rulers, at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges, no special legislation. We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.

1948 - Articles 1 & 3 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Wilson's Proclamation 1335 - Flag Day

"Let us on that day rededicate ourselves to the nation, "one and inseparable" from which every thought that is not worthy of our fathers' first vows in independence, liberty, and right shall be excluded and in which we shall stand with united hearts, for an America which no man can corrupt, no influence draw away from its ideals, no force divide against itself,-a nation signally distinguished among all the nations of mankind for its clear, individual conception alike of its duties and its privileges, its obligations and its rights."
 
Woodrow Wilson could not have picked a better time to try and unify the country through the symbol of the American flag.  On May 30th, 1916 he gave his Presidential Proclamation 1335, which established Flag day.  He had many motives for doing so.  The United States had become a nation of immigrants in the second half of the 19th and early 20th century, there were still deep cultural divides between North, South, and West, and the country was again being pulled apart by the European conflict later known as WWI.  Wilson won the presidency on a pacifist platform and continued to keep the US out of the international war.  However, the Lusitania had been sunk and continuing German u-boat threats to the seas prompted many Americans to advocate the country joining the war.  Flag day has lasted but Wilson's pacifism did not and reluctantly followed with Congress's declaration of war less than a year later.


"Many circumstances have recently conspired to turn our thoughts to a critical examination of the conditions of our national life, of the influences which have seemed to threaten to divide us in interest and sympathy, of forces within and forces without that seemed likely to draw us away from the happy traditions of united purpose and action of which we have been so proud."

Woodrow Wilson's Complete Speech from the American Presidency Project
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=62991