The five-member group that prepared the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was called the Committee of Five.
The Second Continental Congress appointed the committee on June 11, 1776. Its members were Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert R. Livingston of New York. The membership gave several colonies and political viewpoints a role in preparing the document.
The committee asked Jefferson to write the initial draft. Adams and Franklin reviewed it with him, and the full Congress later debated and amended the text. The committee therefore helped organize the writing process, but it did not independently approve the final Declaration.
The group illustrates how the Declaration emerged through both individual authorship and collective political action. Jefferson supplied the draft prose, while Congress made the document an official act by considering and adopting it. The Committee of Five is distinct from earlier revolutionary committees, such as the colonial Committees of Correspondence.