On this day, during the period of the French Revolution, the National Constituent Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen as the first step toward writing a constitution for France. The declaration was initially drafted by Marquis de Lafayette with assistance from Thomas Jefferson, but the majority of the final draft came from Abbé Sieyès. The concepts in the Declaration were heavily influenced by the political philosophy of the Enlightenment and the principles of human rights, principles that were widely shared throughout European society at that time, rather than confined to a small elite as in the past. The Declaration was attached as a preamble to the French Constitution of 1791 and was incorporated into the current Constitution of France in 1958.
