The Committee of Five drafted the United States Declaration of Independence for the Second Continental Congress.
Congress appointed the committee on June 11, 1776, after deciding that a formal declaration should explain the colonies’ independence. Its members were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston.
Jefferson wrote the initial draft, but the final document was a collaborative political text. The committee presented Jefferson’s draft to Congress, which debated, edited, and adopted the Declaration on July 4, 1776.
The committee is sometimes confused with the five-member committee that arranged the first Continental Congress or with later Revolutionary bodies. Its specific task was drafting the declaration, not voting independence itself. Congress’s independence decision came through the Lee Resolution on July 2.