How America came to be

The Declaration of Independence

Five men drafted it, one wrote most of it, and Congress cut a quarter of it away.

A committee of five was appointed: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston. Jefferson, then thirty-three, did the writing. Congress adopted it on 4 July 1776 after editing hard — roughly a quarter of his text was removed, including a long passage blaming the King for the slave trade, struck out to keep South Carolina and Georgia in.

The document has three parts. First, an argument about where the right to govern comes from: from the consent of the governed, and never from the ruler. Second, a long list of specific complaints, which is most of its length and which almost nobody reads. Third, the declaration itself, in a single sentence.

The sentence everybody knows — that all men are created equal, with unalienable rights — was not true of the country that wrote it, and the people who wrote it knew that. It has been quoted ever since by the people it excluded, precisely because it was written down. Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King Jr. all did the same thing with it: held the country to its own words.

Questions to work through

1. The Declaration has three parts. Name them, and say which is longest.
2. Congress cut about a quarter of Jefferson's draft. Why might a committee improve a piece of writing? Why might it not?
3. Find one later American who quoted the Declaration back at the country. What were they asking for?