When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence ... Two years after ratification, the Constitution was amended by adding the Bill of Rights. James Madison, who drafted the Bill of Rights, ...

On August 19, 1791, Benjamin Banneker wrote a lengthy letter to Thomas ... encouraged Jefferson to accept "the indispensable duty of those who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature ...

As for unalienable, the early drafts of the Declaration as Thomas Jefferson wrote it ... our understanding of civil rights which comes to fuller flower in the Bill of Rights, some 15 years ...