Who wrote the initial draft of the Declaration of Independence, central to America250?

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

Congress appointed a five-member drafting committee in June 1776. It included Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. The committee chose Jefferson to prepare the first draft, which he largely wrote between June 11 and June 28.

The full Congress then revised the document. Members removed and changed passages, shortened the text, and approved the final version on July 4. Jefferson therefore wrote the initial draft, but the Declaration of Independence was a collective congressional document rather than a text adopted exactly as he first composed it.

Jefferson later became the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. His role in drafting the declaration remains one of the best-known facts connected with the nation’s 1776 founding.