Thomas Jefferson was the principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence.
The Second Continental Congress appointed Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston to a drafting committee. Jefferson wrote the principal draft in June 1776, drawing on ideas about natural rights and government by consent. The committee and Congress revised his language before adoption on July 4.
Jefferson was 33 years old when he wrote the draft. The document's political argument held that people possess fundamental rights and that governments derive legitimate power from the consent of the governed. Its later influence reached constitutional debates, abolitionist arguments, and independence movements around the world.
Calling Jefferson the principal drafter does not mean he wrote the final text without help. Franklin and Adams reviewed the draft, and Congress made important changes, including removing a passage criticizing the transatlantic slave trade. Jefferson later became the third president of the United States, but his role in drafting the Declaration predates his presidency by more than a decade.