On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee submitted a resolution to the Continental Congress declaring the Independence of the United States. The resolution was referred to a committee consisting of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingstone, who were directed to draft a declaration embodying this resolution.
The committee reported its draft on June 28; the declaration was adopted on July 2 and signed on July 4.
THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Here in this beautiful document, we have the enumeration of unalienable rights – rights which cannot be taken away or separated from man; namely:
the right to life
the right to liberty
the right to the pursuit of happiness, and
the right to alter or abolish their government and institute new government