Which member of the Committee of Five drafted most of the Declaration of Independence?

Thomas Jefferson drafted most of the Declaration of Independence for the Committee of Five.

Congress appointed the committee on June 11, 1776, to prepare a statement explaining the colonies’ decision to separate from Great Britain. Its members were Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.

Jefferson produced the initial draft at a rented house in Philadelphia. Adams and Franklin reviewed and suggested changes, while the full Continental Congress debated and edited the text before adopting it on July 4.

Jefferson’s draft drew on Enlightenment ideas about natural rights and government by consent. The committee’s work is sometimes simplified into the claim that Jefferson wrote the Declaration alone, but the final document reflects revisions by the committee and by Congress. John Hancock, meanwhile, was president of the Continental Congress and a prominent signer, not a member of the Committee of Five.