mark herring

Mark Herring: Certain unalienable rights

After all the debate, and all the edits, and well before John Hancock and the rest of the signers put quill to paper, this version of the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. It was actually a long list of grievances against the King. But what it meant was that we would form our own nation, because we had “certain unalienable Rights” and would no longer tolerate a monarch denying them.