Committee of Five

Based on Wikipedia: Committee of Five

The Five Men Who Wrote America Into Existence

In the sweltering summer of 1776, five men huddled together in Philadelphia with an impossible task: explain to the world why thirteen colonies had the right to break away from the most powerful empire on Earth. They had less than three weeks.

The document they produced would become the most influential political statement in modern history. But the story of how it came together—the arguments, the compromises, the passages that were cut, and the myths that grew up around the signing—is far messier and more human than the polished legend suggests.

Why a Committee at All?

The Continental Congress didn't wake up one morning and decide to declare independence. The idea had been building for months, pushed along by radicals in various colonies who were tired of half-measures.

North Carolina moved first, passing resolutions in April 1776 that authorized their delegates to vote for independence. Virginia followed in May. Then on June 7th, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia stood in Congress and moved what became known as the Lee Resolution—a formal proposal that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States."

Congress wasn't ready to vote. Too many delegates needed to consult their colonial legislatures. Too many moderates still hoped for reconciliation with Britain. So they did what legislative bodies always do when they're not ready to make a decision: they formed a committee.

But they also did something clever. While delaying the final vote until July 1st, they appointed a separate committee to draft a document explaining why independence was justified. That way, if they did vote yes, they'd have their reasoning ready to publish immediately.

The Five

On June 11th, 1776, Congress selected five delegates for the drafting committee. The selection was political—each man represented a different colony, a different constituency, a different slice of colonial society.

John Adams of Massachusetts was the firebrand. He had been pushing for independence longer and harder than almost anyone. Brilliant, prickly, and utterly convinced of his own rightness, Adams would later become the second President of the United States. He was the committee's engine.

Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania was the celebrity. At seventy years old, he was by far the most famous American alive—a scientist, inventor, writer, and diplomat whose reputation extended across Europe. He brought credibility and, when needed, a wry sense of perspective. Franklin would become the only person to sign all four founding documents: the Declaration, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, and the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was the writer. Just thirty-three years old, tall and red-haired, he was known for his eloquent pen rather than his speaking ability. Jefferson was quiet in debate but devastating on paper. He would become the third President.

Roger Sherman of Connecticut was the workhorse. A former shoemaker turned lawyer and judge, Sherman had an even more remarkable distinction than Franklin: he would become the only person to sign all four of the great state papers—the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. He would later devise the Connecticut Compromise that saved the Constitutional Convention from collapse.

Robert Livingston of New York was the diplomat. Wealthy, well-connected, and cautious, he represented the more conservative wing of the independence movement. Ironically, Livingston would never actually sign the Declaration—he was recalled by his colony before the formal signing ceremony. But his later career proved consequential: he administered the oath of office to George Washington and negotiated the Louisiana Purchase as minister to France.

Why Jefferson Held the Pen

The committee left no meeting minutes, which has driven historians slightly mad ever since. We don't know exactly how they divided the work or what arguments they had. What we do know comes from accounts written decades later by Jefferson and Adams—accounts that don't always agree.

But on one thing everyone concurs: Jefferson wrote the first draft.

Why him? Adams later recalled that Jefferson was chosen partly because of his reputation as a writer, partly because he was from Virginia (the largest colony and therefore symbolically important), and partly because Adams himself was so closely associated with the independence movement that his authorship might have seemed too partisan.

There may have been another reason. Adams was exhausted. He was serving on dozens of committees simultaneously, working himself to the bone on the mechanics of actually organizing an army and a government. Jefferson, by contrast, had time.

And so, over roughly seventeen days, working in the second-floor parlor of his rented lodgings at Seventh and Market Streets, Thomas Jefferson drafted a declaration.

The Editing Process

Jefferson's draft went through multiple rounds of revision before Congress ever saw it.

First, he showed it to Adams and Franklin, the two most senior members of the committee. They made changes. Franklin, ever the editor, tightened the prose. One of his alterations was subtle but significant: Jefferson had written about the "preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness." Someone—probably Franklin—streamlined this to the now-immortal phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That phrase echoes the English philosopher John Locke, who had written about natural rights to "life, liberty, and estate" (meaning property). But the committee's substitution of "the pursuit of happiness" for "property" was deliberate and meaningful. It suggested that the new nation's purpose wasn't merely to protect what people owned, but to enable them to flourish.

The full committee reviewed the revised draft and made more changes. Then Jefferson produced a clean copy incorporating all the alterations.

On June 28th, the Committee of Five presented their work to the full Congress.

What Congress Cut

Congress, sitting as a "Committee of the Whole" (a procedural device that let them debate informally), took a knife to Jefferson's draft.

Most of the edits were minor—a word here, a phrase there. But two substantial passages were eliminated entirely, and both deletions tell us something important about the compromises embedded in America's founding.

The first cut was a harsh criticism of the English people. Jefferson had written passages condemning ordinary Britons for failing to restrain their government. Congress removed these lines. As Jefferson bitterly noted later, "the pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many." Congress didn't want to permanently alienate potential British sympathizers.

The second deletion was more consequential. Jefferson had included a scorching denunciation of the slave trade, blaming King George III for perpetuating the practice. This passage was struck entirely.

Jefferson later wrote that the clause was removed "in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it." But he also acknowledged that Northern delegates were uncomfortable with the passage—after all, New England merchants had grown wealthy transporting enslaved people on their ships.

The irony was staggering. A document proclaiming that "all men are created equal" was being edited to avoid offending slaveholders. This contradiction would haunt America for the next eighty-nine years, until it tore the nation apart in civil war.

The Vote

On July 2nd, 1776, Congress voted on the Lee Resolution—the actual legal declaration of independence. The vote was nearly unanimous, with only New York abstaining (their delegates were still waiting for authorization from home).

John Adams thought July 2nd would be the date Americans celebrated forever. He wrote to his wife Abigail that it "will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival."

He was off by two days.

On July 3rd and the morning of July 4th, Congress continued editing the Declaration's text. By late morning on the Fourth, they had finished. The document was adopted.

But here's where the famous story diverges from reality.

The Myth of the Grand Signing

In popular imagination—and in John Trumbull's famous painting—all fifty-six delegates gathered solemnly on July 4th to sign the Declaration in a grand ceremonial moment.

This never happened.

On July 4th, the only signatures on the Declaration were those of John Hancock, president of Congress, and Charles Thomson, the secretary. These were authentication signatures, confirming that the document was official.

The Declaration was immediately sent to a printer named John Dunlap, who worked through the night to produce broadsides—large single-sheet printings that could be distributed throughout the colonies. These "Dunlap broadsides" were released on July 5th. Only about two hundred were printed, and today only twenty-six survive, each worth millions of dollars.

The formal signing by the full Congress didn't happen until August 2nd, almost a month later. And even then, not everyone signed that day—some delegates signed later, and some, like Robert Livingston, never signed at all.

How did the myth of the July 4th signing take hold? Remarkably, even the participants forgot what had actually happened. By the early 1800s, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin—the most famous members of the Committee of Five—could no longer clearly recall the sequence of events. Their hazy memories, combined with artistic license and patriotic storytelling, created the legend we know today.

Going Public

The Declaration was first published in a newspaper on July 6th, in the Pennsylvania Evening Post. But the real public debut came two days later.

On July 8th, 1776, at noon, the Declaration was read aloud simultaneously in three locations: Philadelphia, Trenton, and Easton. In Philadelphia, a man named John Nixon stood in the yard of what we now call Independence Hall and read the words to a gathered crowd.

Imagine hearing it for the first time—not as a dusty historical document, but as breaking news. Your colony had just declared itself an independent nation. You were no longer a British subject. If this revolution failed, the men who signed that document would be hanged as traitors.

And you might be too.

What the Committee Created

The Committee of Five worked together for less than a month, from June 11th to July 5th, 1776. In that time, they produced a document that has been invoked by revolutionaries, reformers, and freedom movements for nearly 250 years.

Abraham Lincoln called it the "electric cord" linking all Americans to the founding generation. Frederick Douglass used it to condemn the hypocrisy of slavery. Elizabeth Cady Stanton modeled the Declaration of Sentiments after it. Ho Chi Minh quoted it when declaring Vietnamese independence. It has been translated into hundreds of languages and cited in constitutions around the world.

The five men who wrote it were flawed, as all people are. Jefferson owned enslaved people even as he wrote about liberty. Franklin had complicated relationships with his own children. Adams was often insufferable. But in one crucial moment, they found the words that would echo across centuries.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

They wrote better than they knew. They certainly wrote better than they lived. But they wrote, and that made all the difference.