Thomas Jefferson drafted the main text of the Declaration of Independence, the founding document celebrated during America250.
The Second Continental Congress chose a five-member Committee of Five to prepare a declaration. Jefferson wrote the principal draft, while John Adams and Benjamin Franklin helped revise it. Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston were the other committee members.
Jefferson’s draft drew on ideas about natural rights and government by consent that were common in eighteenth-century political thought. Congress edited the text before adopting it, removing or changing several passages. The final document therefore reflects both Jefferson’s writing and the Congress’s revisions.
A common mix-up is treating Jefferson as the sole author of every word. He was the principal drafter, but the committee and Congress shaped the final version. The declaration’s familiar language about equality, rights, and government remains one of Jefferson’s most influential contributions to American political history.