“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Within weeks of their publication in July 1776, those words spread around the world. In August, a London newspaper reprinted the Declaration of Independence in full. Edinburgh followed. Soon after that, it appeared in Madrid, Leiden, Vienna, and Copenhagen. Before long, others drew on the text in more substantial ways. Thomas Jefferson himself helped draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, issued