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| What’s Wrong With This Commercial? Colonial Williamsburg’s television commercial features a child reading to her stuffed animals what sounds like the well-known phrase in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. But it is not. The words from her script come from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, introduced by George Mason and unanimously adopted on June 12, 1776, by the Virginia Convention meeting at the Capitol in Williamsburg, Va. |
From the 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.
Less than one month later, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was adopted in Philadelphia, Pa. His words were:
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.
Mason and Jefferson were not the first to express the thought. Similar phraseology is found in philosopher John Locke’s “Essay Concerning the true original, extent, and end of Civil Government,” written in 1690 and widely quoted by 1776.
Some attentive television viewers may have wondered why Colonial Williamsburg used the Mason passage instead of Jefferson’s words. We believe the Virginia Declaration of Rights is uniquely rooted in the history of Williamsburg. Mason’s proposal was created in Williamsburg, debated here, and adopted here. Colonial Williamsburg is sensitive to its responsibility as an educational institution to teach our nation’s history without error so that, in John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s words, “the future may learn from the past.”
Resources to learn more about these important documents:
The Virginia Declaration of Rights
http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/bill_of_rights/virginia_declaration_of_rights.html
The Declaration of Independence
http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/declaration/declaration_transcription.html
Links to Historic Documents
http://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/4thjuly.cfm
Colonial Dateline
http://www.history.org/almanack/resources/dateline/polcron.cfm#seeds
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