Early Modern (1450 CE - 1800 CE)
Street Demonstrations of Support for Necker (12 July 1789)
Gouverneur Morris, an American in Paris, wrote about the street protests that followed the King’s dismissal of the royal minister of finance, the popular Jacques Necker. Many Parisians considered Necker the man most able to enact reforms that might solve France’s fiscal and economic problems.
Fears for the Bastille: A General’s Concern
In this excerpt from a letter of 5 July 1789, the Marshal de Broglie, head of the royal army who led a conservative faction at court, expresses his fears that amid the current unrest, the royal garrison and prison at the Bastille might come under attack.
The Réveillon Riot (28 April 1789)
The "manufactory" owned by Jean–Baptiste Réveillon in the Saint–Antoine neighborhood of Paris made decorative wallpaper, a lucrative luxury item that required highly skilled (and generally well–paid) workers.
Declaration of Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen, Constitution of the Year III (1795)
After the fall of Robespierre and the dismantling of the Terror, the National Convention drafted yet another republican constitution. The new constitution was also approved in a referendum and put into effect 26 October 1795. It remained until Napoleon came to power in November 1799.
Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs and Their Suppression, 29–30 October 1793
On 29 October 1793, a group of women appeared in the National Convention to complain that female militants had tried to force them to wear the red cap of liberty as a sign of their adherence to the Revolution, but they also presented a petition demanding the suppression of the women’s club behind
Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (September 1791)
Marie Gouze (1748–93) was a self–educated butcher’s daughter from the south of France who, under the name Olympe de Gouges, wrote pamphlets and plays on a variety of issues, including slavery, which she attacked as being founded on greed and blind prejudice.
Condorcet, "On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship," July 1790
Condorcet took the question of political rights to its logical conclusions. He argued that if rights were indeed universal, as the doctrine of natural rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen both seemed to imply, then they must apply to all adults.
Decree of the National Convention of 4 February 1794, Abolishing Slavery in all the Colonies
News traveled slowly from the colonies back to France, and the first word of the emancipations in Saint Domingue aroused suspicion if not outright hostility in the National Convention.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Project
In Motion: The African-American Migration Project portrays the history of 13 defining migrations that formed and transformed African Americans from the 16th century to the present.
Society of the Friends of Blacks, "Address to the National Assembly in Favor of the Abolition of the Slave Trade" (5 February 1790)
The Society of the Friends of Blacks rested their case for the abolition of the slave trade on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and the belief that political rights should be granted to religious minorities.