Key figures: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, George Wythe
Summary
In 1776 Thomas Jefferson, a 33-year-old Virginia lawyer and planter, rose from a relatively junior delegate to the Second Continental Congress to the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson had returned to Congress in May 1776, and although he wished to go back to Virginia to help shape his home state’s new constitution, on June 11 Congress appointed him to the Committee of Five — alongside John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston — charged with drafting a formal statement of independence. Adams later recalled persuading the committee to assign the writing to Jefferson, citing Jefferson’s reputation as a writer and the political wisdom of having a Virginian author the document.
Jefferson composed the draft largely alone between June 11 and June 28, 1776, working in a rented second-floor parlor in the Graff House at Seventh and Market Streets in Philadelphia. He drew on the Enlightenment natural-rights tradition and on contemporary American texts, including George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights and the preamble Jefferson himself had written for a proposed Virginia constitution. Adams and Franklin made minor revisions before the draft was submitted to Congress, which debated it on July 2–4 and cut roughly a quarter of the text — most notably striking Jefferson’s passage condemning the Atlantic slave trade. The amended Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776.
Jefferson’s revolutionary work in 1776 extended beyond the Declaration. He had drafted three versions of a constitution for Virginia earlier that year; though they arrived in Williamsburg too late to be used in full, his preamble was attached to the constitution the Virginia Convention adopted in June. After leaving Congress in September 1776, Jefferson declined an appointment as a commissioner to France and instead took a seat in the new Virginia House of Delegates, where he began a sweeping revision of the state’s legal code, including early efforts toward religious freedom and the reform of inheritance laws.
Significance
Jefferson’s draftsmanship in 1776 gave the American Revolution its most enduring statement of purpose. The Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” and endowed with unalienable rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” distilled Enlightenment political philosophy into language that would be invoked by abolitionists, suffragists, and civil rights movements long after his death. The year established Jefferson as the foremost literary voice of the founding generation and launched a public career that would carry him to the governorship of Virginia, the office of secretary of state, and ultimately the presidency. His 1776 turn toward reforming Virginia’s laws — particularly on religious liberty and entail — also marked the beginning of the domestic reform program he later regarded as among his proudest achievements.