The five-member group that drafted the Declaration of Independence for the Continental Congress in 1776 was the Committee of Five.
Congress appointed the committee on June 11, 1776, while independence was being debated. Its members were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman. The group was responsible for preparing a document explaining why the colonies should separate from Great Britain.
The committee decided that Jefferson would write the first draft. Adams and Franklin consulted with him, and the full Congress later edited the text before adopting it on July 4, 1776. Jefferson is therefore recognized as the principal drafter, but he was not the only member involved in the committee's work.
The Committee of Five is sometimes confused with later constitutional drafting groups, especially the Committee of Detail at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. They were separate bodies working on different documents.