Which committee presented the draft Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress?

The Committee of Five presented the draft Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress.

Congress appointed the Committee of Five on June 11, 1776, to prepare a declaration explaining the colonies’ decision to seek independence. Its members were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Jefferson wrote the initial draft, while the committee reviewed it before presenting it to Congress.

Congress then debated and edited the document. The committee’s role is sometimes confused with authorship by Jefferson alone. Jefferson was the principal drafter, but the final text was a congressional product shaped by revisions and deletions.

The committee presented the draft on June 28, 1776. Congress adopted the Declaration on July 4 after approving the Lee Resolution two days earlier. The Committee of Five therefore belongs to the document’s drafting stage, not to the later signing ceremony, when 56 delegates placed their names on the engrossed parchment.