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This collection of freedom documents is offered as a resource-and as an inspiration-by the International Freedom Center. It is not intended to be comprehensive, and is very much a work in progress. In particular we'd like it to become more international and more eclectic, representing a wider range of freedom movements.

If you have a document you'd like to suggest we add to this collection, click here to send us an e-mail about it. Our criteria are simple: 1) the document should say something important about freedom; 2) it should be historically significant; 3) it should be inspirational (at least to you); and 4) (at least for now) it should be in English or English translation. Suggestions about the annotations are also welcomed, but a suggestion for adding a document need not include an annotation-or even the text of the document itself. We'll find it.

The Magna Carta (1215)
The Magna Carta, based on a document sealed by King John at Runnymede on June 10, 1215, is the original charter of English liberty. It establishes limits on royal power, ranging from taxes to takings, and provides rights of the Church, of inheritance and of debtors. Read today it is something of a potpourri, establishing rights for Wales and London, a system of weights and measures, provisions governing widows-and the rule of law.

Edict of Nantes (1598)
Promulgated by French King Henry IV as a means of ending sectarian strife, this was one of the first written guarantees of religious freedom, extending rights to French Protestants. The era it launched lasted 30 years. The Edict was formally revoked by King Louis XIV in 1685.

The Mayflower Compact (1620)
The Mayflower Compact did not establish a system of governance, but it may be considered the lineal ancestor of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. It was drawn up aboard ship as the Pilgrims on the ship Mayflower lay at anchor in the harbor off what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, November 11, 1620 (November 21 by the modern calendar). It bore the signatures of 41 men, led by William Bradford, their leader and would-be governor of the new colony. The need for a compact was felt because there had been "some appearance of faction" among the settlers, who had been at sea for 66 days. The group's landing at what is now Plymouth was still 30 days away.

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639)
Promulgated by the Towns of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield, Connecticut on January 24, 1639 (by our modern Gregorian calendar), this was the first known written constitution establishing a system of government. Important antecedents include the Mayflower Compact and the constitution of the Iroquois nation, although no definitive copy of the latter document exists.

Thomas Rainborough at the Putney Debates (1647)
Thomas Rainborough was one of the English Levellers, who contended in the English civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. This speech was delivered on October 28, 1647 during a debate on the merits of revolution and universal suffrage between ordinary soldiers and generals of the New Model Army formed by Oliver Cromwell. Its simple, stirring arguments are a precursor of those of John Locke.

The English Bill of Rights (1689)
This document was first delivered as a declaration to the future William and Mary, then the Prince and Princess of Orange, by the House of Commons on February 13, 1688, as Parliament invited them to become England's King and Queen. It was enacted as a Bill of Rights the next year. The English Bill of Rights preceded the U.S. version by precisely one hundred years, and formed the basis not only for some of the American guarantees, but for the language in which they were expressed as well. Thus, the right to petition in the U.S. First Amendment, the protection against quartering of soldiers in the U.S. Second Amendment, and the bars to "excessive bail," "excessive fines," and "cruel and unusual punishments" of the U.S. Eighth Amendment all have their origins here.

Patrick Henry, Speech to the Second Virginia Convention (1775)
Patrick Henry delivered an address with the immortal peroration "give me liberty, or give me death" at what is now St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775. The battles of Lexington and Concord, the opening shots of the American Revolution, were still four weeks in the future. No transcription was made of Henry's remarks. This text is actually a reconstruction published more than 30 years after the fact, and more than nine years after Henry's death, by biographer William Wirt (himself later attorney general of the United States). It was drawn from interviews with some of those present when Henry spoke, including Thomas Jefferson.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
The Virginia Declaration of Rights was written by George Mason, and adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention assembled in Williamsburg on June 12, 1776-just as Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia was beginning work on the Declaration of Independence. The Virginia Declaration is less well-known, but is a truly seminal document: its early paragraphs shaped Jefferson's Declaration, its later provisions (drawing on the English Bill of Rights of 1689) gave rise to Madison's U.S. Bill of Rights some years later, and its structure and language also heavily influenced the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

The Declaration of Independence (1776)
The U.S. Declaration of Independence is probably the most significant freedom document ever written. Composed out of a "decent respect for the opinions of mankind," it was unprecedented in sweep, soaring especially in the language of its opening, revolutionary in ambition as well as intent, and has echoed through the ages. The Continental Congress appointed a committee to draft a declaration on June 11, 1776. Thomas Jefferson was chosen by and from the committee to do the writing. Editing came first from John Adams, then Benjamin Franklin and finally others before presentation to the Congress on June 28. Jefferson's original draft numbered among King George's sins his failure to suppress the slave trade, calling it a "cruel war against human nature itself." But this passage was stricken before the Declaration was adopted on July 2.

Declaration des Droits de l'Homme (Declaration of the Rights of Man) (1789)
This declaration was adopted by the French National Assembly on August 26, 1789, at the same time as the U.S. Congress was debating the Bill of Rights, and just six weeks after the storming of the Bastille. It embodies the full initial promise of the French Revolution, and was the most significant statement of human rights made in Europe in at least a century. The first draft of the Declaration was written by the Marquis de Lafayette, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War; Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. secretary of state and former American envoy to France, contributed editorial suggestions.

The Bill of Rights amendments to the United States Constitution (1791)
The lack of a Bill of Rights was one of the most common objections to the U.S. Constitution when it was proposed in 1787. When the first Congress convened, James Madison, one of the Constitution's leading framers and a leader of the new House of Representatives, proposed a Bill of Rights in 17 amendments. The Senate melded these into 12, which passed the Congress in September 1789, just weeks after the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. The second of the 12 amendments, governing changes in congressional pay, was not ratified for over 200 years, until 1992. The first proposal, dealing with the size of the House of Representatives, has never been ratified. The third through twelfth of the proposals, what we know as the U.S. Bill of Rights, became the first ten Amendments to the Constitution when ratification was completed in 1791.

Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)
Jefferson came to the presidency after the first election contested on a partisan basis, and in the wake of concerted government attempts to quell political debate in the name of attacking "sedition." In his first statement in office, in addition to re-stating what he considered the "essential principles of our government," Jefferson memorably pleaded for tolerance, declaring that "We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists."

Seneca Falls Declaration and Resolutions (1848)
Modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions were propounded by a convention called by pioneering feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York on July 19-20, 1848 after Mott was refused permission to speak at an international anti-slavery conference in London, even though she was a delegate. Stanton drafted the Declaration and Resolutions, which were signed by one hundred of those in attendance. Only one of the 68 female signers lived long enough to see suffrage for women become part of the U.S. Constitution, in 1920. Women made up roughly 200 of the approximately 240 delegates in attendance at Seneca Falls; among the men was Frederick Douglass.

The Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as what would today be termed an "executive order" on September 22, 1862, making it effective on the first day of 1863. Paradoxically, the Proclamation, justified in part "upon military necessity," freed only those slaves it was then beyond the power of the U.S. government to actually liberate-those in the areas of the so-called Confederate States not yet re-taken by the U.S. Army. But the Proclamation made slavery's demise in America nearly inevitable, effectively including abolition among the Union's official war aims, and ruling out the sorts of compromises with slavery within the nation that had prevailed from the time of the Declaration of Independence until the outbreak of the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, less than 300 words long, was delivered so quickly that a contemporary photographer did not have time to set up his equipment before the president was finished. Lincoln wrote the address himself, with no editorial input from anyone else. The occasion was the dedication of a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War's pivotal battle. Lincoln's call for a "new birth of freedom" is just one of the phrases from this speech that have become an essential part of the basic American text.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1865)
The Thirteenth Amendment did for people living on land controlled by the Union what the Emancipation Proclamation did only for those on land then controlled by the Confederacy-abolish slavery in the U.S. The amendment was proposed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, while the Civil War still raged. By war's end just over three months later, it had been ratified by 21 states. Ratification was completed December 6, 1865, when Georgia became the sixth of the former Confederate states to ratify the Amendment; Mississippi had rejected the Amendment two days earlier. Interestingly, while the Southern states' ratification of the Amendment was counted toward the necessary two-thirds of states necessary to amend the Constitution, those states' representatives had not yet been re-admitted to the Congress.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1868)
Re-admission of the Confederate states to the Union was made contingent by the Congress on their ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment; President Andrew Johnson had proposed that ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment be sufficient. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by the Congress in 1866 and ratified more than two full years later. It was a reaction to the passage of the so-called Black Codes passed by Southern legislatures, and was designed to guarantee national citizenship to former slaves. The second section of the Amendment specifically reversed the constitutional "three-fifths rule" of the original Article I, Section 2, which counted slaves for purposes of apportioning the Congress as three-fifths of a person. In the Twentieth Century, the Amendment's first section became the constitutional basis for expanding federal power and upholding nationwide regulations.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1870)
The Fifteenth Amendment was the last of the three Reconstruction amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It ostensibly guaranteed citizens the right to vote, and forbade discrimination in voting rights based on race. But after the end of Reconstruction in 1876, effective enabling legislation, envisioned by the Amendment's second section, was not passed until the Voting Rights Act of 1965-96 years after Congress proposed the Amendment, and 95 years after it was ratified.

Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus (1883)
Emma Lazarus wrote this poem to help raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, and it is inscribed on a tablet affixed to the pedestal. The Statue, a gift to the people of the United States from the people of France, cost $400,000; $270,000 had to be raised in the U.S. to pay for the pedestal. The Statue was dedicated in 1886. Lazarus died the next year at the age of 38.

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1920)
Suffrage for women was demanded by the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, and what became the Nineteenth Amendment was first proposed in Congress in 1878, after the Supreme Court had ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not mandate the vote for women. The movement was led first by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, later by Susan B. Anthony and then by many others. By 1912, nine western states had given women the vote, beginning with Wyoming in 1890. New York followed in 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson reversed his earlier opposition in 1918. Congress passed the amendment on May 21, 1919 and it was ratified August 18, 1920.

Louis Brandeis, excerpt from Whitney v. California (1927)
Justice Louis Brandeis's opinion in Whitney v. California is one of the most ringing defenses of the value of free speech ever penned. Brandeis makes the case that freedom of speech is essential to democracy, and stresses that this remains so even in times of grave threat. As Brandeis memorably notes, "fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Four Freedoms (1941)
On January 6, 1941, having just been elected to an unprecedented third term as president, and with the Second World War already 16 months old (even as the U.S. remained officially neutral), Franklin Roosevelt offered a universal vision of freedom. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms were the subject of an iconic set of paintings by Norman Rockwell, commissioned by the Saturday Evening Post and published in 1943. After Roosevelt's death, the Four Freedoms were enshrined in the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "the highest aspiration of the common people."

Judge Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty (1944)
Learned Hand was probably the most distinguished American legal mind of his generation, in many ways the intellectual heir of Oliver Wendell Holmes. On May 21, 1944, with the outcome of the Second World War still in doubt and while a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, he delivered this speech on "I Am An American Day" in New York's Central Park. The spirit of liberty, he declared lies not in the law, but "in the hearts of men and women" and is "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right."

Nehru at the moment of Indian Independence (1947)
India was slated to become independent of Great Britain at midnight on August 15, 1947. As the hour of liberation approached, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, delivered this address to his people. The "greatest man of our generation," "the Father of our Nation" to whom Nehru refers is his mentor, Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma. Nehru's concluding words, Jai Hind, translate literally from Hindi as "Hail to India."

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
The United Nation Human Rights Commission, chaired by former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights over a period of 24 months beginning in January 1947. Ratification by the General Assembly came on December 10, 1948. Among the key drafters were John Humphrey of Canada, Rene Cassin of France, Charles Malik of Lebanon, P.C. Chang of China, Hernan Santa Cruz of Chile and Roosevelt herself. While the language of the Universal Declaration is not as memorable as some other milestones of freedom, its scope was unprecedented. Although many provisions have been widely observed in the breach, the document remains the closest thing to a world standard of the elements of freedom.

John F. Kennedy at the Berlin Wall (1963)
The Berlin Wall was erected by the Soviet Union in August 1961 to stop the flow of refugees from East Berlin to the West. Twenty-two months later, on June 26, 1963, President Kennedy addressed Berliners in the shadow of the Wall. The President and the crowd fed off each other's emotions in this almost belligerent reaffirmation of freedom-much of what Kennedy said was extemporized. (A footnote: Kennedy's reference to "my interpreter translating my German" came about as follows: A "Berliner," like a Frankfurter or a Hamburger, is both a resident of a city and a popular name for a food of local origin-in the case of a "berliner," a jelly doughnut. While many in the crowd shouted approval and applauded Kennedy's first use of the phrase, understanding his intent, some laughed, and the interpreter hastened to offer the grammatically correct "Ich bin Berliner," omitting the "ein." Kennedy, not understanding what had happened and always uncomfortable speaking languages other than English, offered his remark about the translation.)

Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" speech (1963)
Both popular and scholarly surveys agree that the greatest American speech of the Twentieth Century was Martin Luther King Jr.'s address to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. King had prepared a text for the speech, but ended up speaking largely extemporaneously, drawing on speeches and sermons he had been giving across his native South, and the nation as a whole, for eight years.

Lyndon B. Johnson, "We Shall Overcome" speech (1965)
In March 1965, just eight days after a march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama was met by police violence on "Bloody Sunday," President Lyndon Johnson rallied the Congress and his country to finally fulfill the century-old promise of the Fifteenth Amendment. Recalling the poor Mexican-American children he had taught at a rural school in 1928, Johnson said, "It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country. But now I do have that chance-and I'll let you in on a secret-I mean to use it." One hundred forty-four days later the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law.

Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Address (1994)
From June 1964 until February 1990, for nearly 27 years, Nelson Mandela was a prisoner of the minority apartheid government of South Africa. Just 51 months after his release from prison, he was sworn in as the president of his country. In the interim, he earned and was awarded a share in the Nobel Peace prize for arranging South Africa's peaceful transition to democratic rule.

Preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996)
Following Nelson Mandela's release from prison, South Africa adopted an interim Constitution in 1993. A permanent Constitution was proposed in May 1996 and came into effect on December 10, 1996. As the official explanatory memorandum said, "the process of drafting the Constitution involved many South Africans in the largest public participation programme ever carried out in South Africa. After nearly two years of intensive consultations, political parties represented in the Constitutional Assembly negotiated the formulations contained in this text, which are an integration of ideas from ordinary citizens, civil society and political parties represented in and outside of the Constitutional Assembly. "This Constitution therefore represents the collective wisdom of the South African people and has been arrived at by general agreement." Its preamble recognized the injustices of the past, but without rancor-and with an abiding faith in democracy and freedom for all.

A Terrorist Faces Justice (2003)
On December 22, 2001, less than 15 weeks after the attacks of September 11, Richard Reid, a 28 year-old British subject, petty criminal and trained terrorist attempted to bring down American Airlines flight 63 from Paris to Miami-and to kill all 197 people onboard-by igniting a bomb concealed in his shoe. On January 30, 2003, Chief Judge William Young of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, a federal judge since 1985, made the following statement in sentencing Reid...

George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address (2005)
Clarion calls for freedom continue to be issued to this day. One of the most ambitious in recent years was this speech by a controversial U.S. president, who nevertheless set out a vision of freedom that is widely shared, even if disagreements continue to rage over how best to pursue it.