Thomas Jefferson drafted most of the Declaration of Independence commemorated by America250.
Congress appointed a five-member drafting committee in June 1776. The committee included Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Jefferson, then 33 years old, wrote the main draft, drawing on political ideas about natural rights and government by consent.
The committee revised the text before presenting it to the Second Continental Congress. Congress made substantial edits, including removing a passage criticizing the transatlantic slave trade and changing other wording. The final document therefore reflects both Jefferson’s writing and Congress’s collective decisions.
Jefferson later became the third president of the United States, but he did not sign the Declaration as its sole author. The document was an official act of Congress, and its adoption represented the colonies’ joint assertion of independence. America250 commemorates that collaborative founding process as well as Jefferson’s influential draft.