The five-member group that prepared the United States Declaration of Independence was the Committee of Five.
The Second Continental Congress appointed the committee on June 11, 1776. Its members were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Congress asked them to prepare a public explanation of independence from Great Britain.
Jefferson wrote the main draft, while the other members reviewed and revised it before presenting it to Congress. The committee submitted the document on June 28, and Congress debated and edited it before adopting the final version on July 4.
The Committee of Five should not be confused with the Continental Congress itself, which debated and approved the Declaration. Nor was it the Committee of Correspondence, a separate colonial communications network active before the Revolution.