What five-member group drafted the Declaration later commemorated by the U.S. Semiquincentennial?

The five-member group that drafted the Declaration of Independence was the Committee of Five.

The Second Continental Congress appointed the committee on June 11, 1776, as delegates prepared a formal explanation for separating from the British Empire. Its members were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman, representing five different colonies.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the principal draft, but the document was a collaborative political work. Adams and Franklin reviewed Jefferson’s text, and the full Congress debated and revised it before adopting the Declaration on July 4, 1776. The committee itself kept no minutes, so some details of its working process remain uncertain.

The Committee of Five was not the same as the Committee of Detail, which helped organize the text of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Nor was it a military or intelligence body such as the Continental Board of War. The Committee of Correspondence was a separate revolutionary communication network used before and during the colonial resistance.