Who drafted the Declaration of Independence celebrated during America250?

Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence celebrated during America250.

Jefferson wrote the initial draft in June 1776 after the Second Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five to prepare a declaration. The committee also included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Jefferson was chosen as the principal writer because of his skill with political prose.

Congress then revised the draft during several days of debate. It removed substantial passages, including Jefferson’s criticism of the slave trade and accusations involving the British king. The final text therefore reflects both Jefferson’s drafting and Congress’s collective editing.

Jefferson’s draft drew on ideas about natural rights and government by consent that were influential in eighteenth-century political thought. Drafting the document did not make him its sole author in the modern legal sense: Congress adopted the final wording.