Fifty-six delegates eventually signed the Declaration of Independence, the founding document at the center of America250.
The signers represented the thirteen colonies that became the original United States. Their names appear on the engrossed parchment copy, the formal handwritten document now preserved at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
The number 56 can be confused with 13, the number of colonies, or with the number of states in later American history. The signers were delegates to the Second Continental Congress, not a group of elected representatives from all future U.S. states.
The signing was not necessarily one grand ceremony on July 4. Congress adopted the Declaration on July 4, while most historians conclude that the main signing occurred on August 2, 1776, with some delegates signing later. That distinction makes the document’s history more precise without changing the total number of signers.