Who wrote the United States Declaration of Independence?
The Continental Congress met in Philadelphia on June 11, 1776. They appointed Thomas Jefferson of Virginia to work with the five-person committee of John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. The committee delegated most of the writing to Thomas Jefferson. They wanted to write a paper that said why America should be a country. The leaders of America would use this paper to declare independence (make America apart from Great Britain). That committee subsequently assigned Jefferson the task of producing a draft document for its consideration. He did most of the writing. Drawing on documents, such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights, state and local calls for independence, and his own draft of a Virginia constitution, Jefferson wrote a stunning statement of the colonists’ right to rebel against the British government and establish their own based on the premise that all
