Ho Chi Minh's Speech

September 2nd, 1945, first President of an independent Vietnam Ho Chi Minh, delivered his address of a free nation in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh square. The first lines of his proclamation repeated verbatim the famous second paragraph of America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."(Logevall, 96)

Similar to the American Declaration of Independence, it was not willing to compromise. Ho Chi Minh’s intentions were not to set his country free, rather to claim the freedom that already existed. Vietnam was literally in chaos, finding itself run by several different nations at different times. With the help of the Chinese ridding Vietnam of the Japanese, France found its way back in to the country with terms of French troops settling there. This was no free nation; it was a nation that could not stop itself from being divided. Like Ame...