Thomas Jefferson wrote the principal draft of the United States Declaration of Independence.
In June 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five to prepare a declaration. The committee included Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Jefferson, then a Virginia delegate in his early thirties, produced the main draft because of his strong writing ability and political arguments.
Congress reviewed the document and made important changes before adopting it on July 4, 1776. Jefferson therefore was the principal drafter, not the sole author of the final wording. Franklin and Adams supported the draft, while the full Congress acted as the approving body. The surviving versions show that the final text differs from Jefferson's original in several places.
Jefferson later became the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. His authorship is sometimes confused with the role of the other committee members or with the later signers. The Declaration's 56 signatures represent delegates who signed the engrossed document, not five authors.