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JEFFERSON'S ORIGINAL WORDING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
>On your web site you have a section >() >"Inalienable Rights". This is not what Thomas >Jefferson said, in the Declaration of Independence it >says,"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"; see >the National Archives web site, the place that has >the actual document: >(A HREF="http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/declaration.html"http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/declaration.html) > >Please tell me you're going to change this as soon as >possible. You missed the citation at the bottom of the quote. The quotation on my site is the "Declaration of Independence AS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY Thomas Jefferson, 1776. Papers, 1:315." This is how Jefferson wrote it himself BEFORE submitting it to Congress, and is the version he included in his Autobiography. It is slightly different than the version as finally issued by Congress, which is the copy at the National Archives site. Jefferson orignally had it, "with inherent and inalienable rights," which was afterwards changed to "certain unalienable rights." But because the original version has a fuller philosophical meaning, I chose to put his original version on my website, since I wanted to cover as completely as possible Jefferson's concept of inalienable rights. (In fact, it was the printer, not Congress, that changed "inalienable" to "unalienable.") For these reasons, I will not be changing what is posted on my site. But thanks for visiting the site and for writing. Best wishes, Eyler Coates