Who wrote most of the Declaration of Independence, central to America250?

Thomas Jefferson wrote most of the Declaration of Independence, central to America250.

The Second Continental Congress appointed the five-member Committee of Five to prepare a declaration. Its members were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston. The committee assigned the main drafting work to Jefferson, who produced the original draft in June 1776.

Congress then edited Jefferson’s text before adopting it on July 4. Jefferson was not the sole author of the final wording, because the committee and Congress revised the document. His draft nevertheless supplied most of the structure and language that became famous.

The authorship is sometimes confused with the document’s most prominent signer. John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, signed the engrossed copy prominently, but he did not write the Declaration. Jefferson later served as the third president of the United States.