The five-member group that drafted the Declaration of Independence for America250’s founding story was the Committee of Five. The Second Continental Congress appointed it on June 11, 1776, after deciding to prepare a formal declaration of independence.
The committee consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Jefferson wrote the principal draft, while the other members reviewed and refined it before presenting it to Congress.
The committee’s work did not make the five members equal authors of every sentence. Jefferson’s draft supplied the document’s basic structure and language, but Congress debated the text and removed or changed substantial passages. The final declaration therefore represents both Jefferson’s writing and Congress’s collective action.
The Committee of Five should not be confused with committees of correspondence, which helped exchange political information before and during the Revolution. Nor was it the same as the later committee responsible for preparing the Articles of Confederation.