The Declaration of Independence, Lesson 3: The Drafts: From Jefferson's Rough Draft to the Engrossed Copy

Which Text Do We Mean?

People who say "the Declaration of Independence" usually mean a text of about 1,320 words, beginning "When in the Course of human events" and ending "our sacred Honor," that Congress adopted on July 4, 1776.¹ That text is the end of a process that left at least ten distinct documents. Two of them are Jefferson's own earlier versions, one is a copy Adams made, one is the committee's report to Congress, several are Congress's working papers and printings, and one is the parchment that most of the signers signed. They differ. The differences answer questions that come up often: who changed "sacred and undeniable" to "self-evident," what Congress struck, and why the passage on the slave trade is not in the adopted text.

This lesson sets out the stages, quotes the passages that changed and lays them side by side. Two kinds of source matter here. One kind is the manuscripts themselves, as reproduced and described by the Library of Congress, the National Archives and the 1906 Government Printing Office edition of the Journals. The other kind is testimony: Jefferson's and Adams's later accounts of what was changed and by whom. The two kinds do not always agree. Where they differ, this lesson says so.

A word about method. Jefferson's own Autobiography reprints the committee's report with the passages Congress struck marked, which lets a reader see the cuts in his hand. The Library of Congress publishes the text of the "original Rough draught" as reconstructed by the editor of the Jefferson Papers. The National Archives publishes the adopted text from the engrossed parchment. This lesson compares those three, and it counts words in each. Those counts are this lesson's own and are labeled as such.

The Stages of the Text

The surviving record divides into stages. The table below lists them in order, with where each is kept or how it is known. Stages 4, 5 and 6 are known mainly by reconstruction.

The sequence has a fork in it. Jefferson in 1823 described a single line: he drafted, sent the draft separately to Franklin and Adams, made a fair copy and reported it "unaltered to the Congress."⁴ The manuscripts show more activity than that. The Library of Congress counts 47 alterations on the "original Rough draught" before the June 28 report, "including the insertion of three complete paragraphs."¹⁰ Jefferson's fair copy for the committee, if it existed, would show the committee's text in a clean hand. It has not survived, so the committee's report must be rebuilt from later copies. The reconstruction is good for most words and uncertain for a few.

Jefferson's Fragment and the Original Rough Draught

The earliest surviving piece is a single fragment. The Library of Congress describes it as "the only surviving fragment of the earliest known draft" and says it shows that "Jefferson heavily edited his first draft of the Declaration before he prepared a clean, or 'fair' copy that became the basis of the 'original Rough draught.'" He wrote on the top half of the sheets "thus allowing space for notes." None of the words he deleted in the fragment appears in the later draft, but "all of the undeleted 148 words including those carreted and interlined were copied into the 'original Rough draught' in a clear form." The Library adds that the fragment was recognized in 1947 by Julian P. Boyd, the editor of the Jefferson Papers, and that the writing on the bottom half of the sheet is Jefferson's draft of a resolution on the resignation of General John Sullivan dated July 26, 1776.²

The second piece is the "original Rough draught." Jefferson called it that himself; late in life he endorsed the sheets "Independance. Declaration of original Rough draught."² It is a clean copy of the text, which then collected corrections. The Library of Congress says it records "the evolution of the text from the initial composition draft by Jefferson to the final text adopted by Congress on the morning of July 4, 1776," with "minor emendations in the hands of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin," and that Jefferson himself indicated some of the alterations by Adams and Franklin.² The Journal edition of 1906 confirms the point in its notes, which report that Jefferson wrote "Dr. Franklin" or "Mr. Adams" against several words and phrases on the manuscript.⁹

The Library of Congress publishes the text of the draft as it stood before revision, as reconstructed by Julian Boyd. That text has 1,704 words by this lesson's count, against about 1,320 in the adopted Declaration.¹¹¹ The adopted text is about 22 percent shorter, counting the net effect of everything: Jefferson's own cuts, the committee's additions, Congress's cuts and Congress's additions. That figure is close to Adams's recollection that "Congress cut off about a quarter of it."¹² This lesson's count of the passages Congress struck, below, runs higher than a quarter of the text as Congress received it, because the committee had already added material and Congress added some of its own.

The reconstruction also lets a reader see the shape of Jefferson's original. It has four parts. An opening sentence states the purpose: "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change." A statement of principles follows. A long list of charges against the King begins with "the history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations," and runs through the passage on slavery. A fifth movement turns to "our British brethren" and ends with the renunciation of the King and the pledge of "our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honour."¹¹ The adopted text keeps the same four-part design. The adopted indictment has 27 charges by this lesson's count, and the whole text is divided in size roughly as 338 words for the opening and principles, 707 for the indictment and the paragraph on petitions, 117 for the address to the British, and 158 for the conclusion.¹

The Adams and Franklin Changes

Jefferson told Madison in 1823 that the alterations by Franklin and Adams "were two or three only, and merely verbal." Carl Becker, whose 1922 study of the drafts is the standard account, called that statement inaccurate. As summarized by the Online Library of Liberty, Becker counts five corrections in Franklin's hand and two in Adams's on the rough draft.⁵ The Library of Congress counts 47 alterations in all before the June 28 report, but it does not break them down by person in the pages this lesson read.¹⁰

Two examples are documented. In the charge about judges, Jefferson's original read "he has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and amount of their salaries."¹¹ The adopted text reads "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."¹ Becker, according to the summary, attributes "the amount & payment of their salaries" to Franklin's hand. In the charge about elections, the adopted text reads "He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected," and Becker credits the words "after such dissolutions" to Adams.⁵¹ The phrase "payment of" and the phrase "after such dissolutions" are small. Each makes the sentence more exact, which is the usual effect of a careful second reader.

The Adams copy gives another view. Charles Francis Adams, the editor of his grandfather's Works, described a transcript in Adams's hand of Jefferson's draft "very nearly as it appears in Mr. Jefferson's first draught," made "before the paper had been subjected to any change in committee, as none of the alterations which appear on the original, as made at the instance of Dr. Franklin, and but one of the two suggested by himself, are found there." The editor noted that "Several variations occur, however, in the phraseology, and one or two passages are wholly omitted," and concluded that Adams "had modified it to suit his own notions of excellence, without deeming the alterations worth pressing in committee."³ Adams's copy lets a reader see Jefferson's text at the moment he first handed it over, and it lets a reader see which changes came later.

Jefferson, according to the Becker summary, made changes of his own after the draft came back from Adams: "three new paragraphs and sixteen verbal changes." Becker suspects that Adams suggested one of the new paragraphs, the charge that the King "has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures."⁵¹ That charge is in the adopted text and does not appear in the reconstruction of Jefferson's original.¹¹¹ The summary says that Becker thought Jefferson probably right that the committee as a whole made no changes, since Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were a majority of it.⁵

One famous change has no secure attribution. Jefferson's original reads "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable."¹¹ The text Jefferson reprinted in his Autobiography as "originally reported" on June 28 reads "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with [certain] [inherent and] inalienable rights."¹³ So "self evident" and the shortened sentence were in the report before Congress received it. Many popular accounts credit Franklin with "self-evident." This lesson could not confirm whose hand wrote it. The 1906 Journal edition notes that Jefferson marked certain words with Franklin's or Adams's name, but its scanned text is too broken to read which words, and this lesson does not guess.⁹

The better summary of the Adams and Franklin contribution is Adams's own, in the 1822 letter: "I do not remember that Franklin or Sherman criticized any thing. We were all in haste." The manuscripts show he forgot at least his own two changes.¹²⁵ Lesson 2 shows how Jefferson's and Adams's accounts of the committee conflict.

The Committee's Report, June 28

On Friday, June 28, 1776, the committee "brought in a draught, which was read." The Journal orders it to lie on the table.⁶ No Journal entry prints the text on that day. The text that Congress received is known from later copies. Jefferson's Autobiography reprints it, marking the cuts Congress later made, and the Lee copy and the copy in Jefferson's Notes are the other main witnesses.¹³⁵

The reported text differs from the original in many details, and the Autobiography copy shows several. The opening sentence now reads "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them." In the original it had read "for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station."¹³¹¹ The statement of principles is shorter. The preamble to the charges now reads "such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government," where the original had "expunge."¹³ These changes were made before the report, so they were made by Jefferson, Adams, Franklin or the committee, not by Congress.

Jefferson later reported that the committee approved his text. In the Autobiography he writes "The committee for drawing the Declaration of Independence, desired me to do it. It was accordingly done, and being approved by them, I reported it to the House on Friday, the 28th of June, when it was read, and ordered to lie on the table."¹³ In the same memoir he adds a note that he took notes in his place during the debates and "at their close wrote them out in form and with correctness," and that he had given explanations to Samuel A. Wells in 1819 after "some erroneous statements of the proceedings on the Declaration of Independence having got before the public in latter times."¹⁴ Those notes and explanations were written decades later or in unknown circumstances, and nothing in the Journal tells a reader how far to trust them.

The Library of Congress timeline says that on June 28 "A fair copy of the committee draft of the Declaration of Independence is read in Congress."¹⁵ If that fair copy is the same as Jefferson's "fair copy" of the 1823 letter, it is the text Congress amended. It does not survive.⁴ What survives is the "original Rough draught," on which Jefferson recorded Congress's alterations, and the printed Journal copy that shows the adopted wording.²⁹

What Congress Struck

After the vote on the Lee resolution on July 2, Congress turned to the Declaration. The Journal records that on July 2 the committee of the whole, "not having had time to go through the same," asked leave to sit again, that on July 3 it again "not having finished" asked leave to sit again, and that on July 4 it reported "a Declaration," which was "again read" and "agreed to."¹⁶⁹ The Journal records none of the debate. Jefferson's account is the main testimony. He wrote that the debates "having taken up the greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4th days of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed."¹⁷

Jefferson reprinted the report with the cuts marked. Counted from the printed text, the largest struck passages were these.¹³

Those seven passages total about 554 words. Smaller deletions, such as "and continually," "and ships of war," "by a self-assumed power" and "inherent and," add a few dozen more, and Congress also inserted words of its own. The net change from Jefferson's 1,704-word original to the adopted 1,320 words is a reduction of 384 words, or about 22 percent.¹¹¹ Adams's "about a quarter" is close to that figure. Another witness gives a different figure: a history site says "more than a quarter of the text was deleted," without giving a word count.¹⁸

Jefferson gave two reasons for the cuts in the Autobiography. The first concerns the British: "those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence." He calls the thought that the colonies "had friends in England worth keeping terms with" a "pusillanimous idea."¹⁷ The second concerns slavery. The Journal records none of this. The reasons are Jefferson's and Adams's, from memory, and the passage on slavery needs its own section.

Congress also added. The adopted text includes "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions" in the closing paragraph and "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence" in the pledge. It adds the charge that the King "has excited domestic insurrections amongst us," which replaces the struck passage on slaves. It adds "scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages" to the charge about foreign mercenaries. It adds "certain" before "unalienable Rights."¹¹³ A reader who looks for Jefferson's wording will find some sentences that are not his, and a reader who looks for Congress's contribution will find these.

The Passage on Slavery and the Slave Trade

The largest single deletion was the charge about slavery. In the original it reads, in part: "he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce."¹¹ The passage continues with a charge that the King was "now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them."¹¹ By this lesson's count the passage had 168 words.¹³

The passage's argument is aimed at the King. It blames him, and not the colonial slaveholders or the colonial slave traders, for the slave trade, and it says he used his "negative," the royal veto, to block colonial laws that "prohibit or to restrain" it. This lesson did not read the colonial statutes the charge alludes to, so it cannot say how well the charge fits the record. A reader who wants to test it should look at colonial laws on the slave trade and their disallowance by the Crown, which this lesson did not examine.

Jefferson said who forced the cut. In the Autobiography he wrote: "The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out 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. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."¹⁷ Adams, in 1822, said he had been "delighted" with the draft "especially that concerning negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose," and guessed that the original draft had not been published because of "the vehement philippic against negro slavery."¹² The two men agree that delegates from the lower South objected. The Journal does not record who spoke, who moved the cut, or how any colony voted on it.¹⁶ That limit is part of the evidence. The testimony is Jefferson's and Adams's, written long afterward, and this lesson could not find a contemporary record of the debate on this clause.

Three other documents of 1774 to 1776 put the passage in context. The Articles of Association of October 20, 1774 bound the signers to a ban: "We will neither import nor purchase, any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time, we will wholly discontinue the slave trade."¹⁹ Virginia's convention in May 1776 complained that the royal governor was "tempting our slaves by every artifice to resort to him, and training and employing them against their masters."²⁰ And Jefferson's own draft constitution for Virginia, dated June 1776, includes the clause "No person hereafter coming into this county shall be held within the same in slavery under any pretext whatever."²¹ The draft constitution also opens with a list of charges against "George Guelf king of Great Britain and Ireland" that overlaps the Declaration's list, as Lesson 5 shows.²¹ These three documents show that the struck passage was one position among several taken by the same people in the same years.

The adopted text has a replacement in the same place. The charge that the King "has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages" appears in the adopted text where Jefferson's draft had the sentence that the King had incited "treasonable insurrections of our fellow-subjects" and the slavery passage.¹¹¹ The words "domestic insurrections" do not appear in the original.¹¹ The Virginia preamble of May 15, 1776 shows what they may refer to, but this lesson did not find a source that settles the point, so it leaves the reference open.²⁰

Side by Side: Key Passages

The table below sets Jefferson's original, the June 28 report as Jefferson reprinted it and the adopted text next to one another for eight passages. "Original" quotations are from the Boyd reconstruction published by the Library of Congress. "Report" quotations are from Jefferson's Autobiography, where struck words are shown in brackets in the source. "Adopted" quotations are from the National Archives transcription.¹¹¹³¹

Two patterns appear in the table. Most of Congress's changes cut material and leave Jefferson's sentences intact where they remain. The adopted text keeps many of Jefferson's phrases word for word, including "decent respect to the opinions of mankind," "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," "a long train of abuses and usurpations," and "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." The second pattern is that the two most conspicuous changes to the ending, the replacement of the original renunciation with the language of the Lee resolution and the addition of "divine Providence," made the document both more formal and more openly religious than Jefferson's draft. The Journal does not record who proposed either addition, so this lesson leaves them unattributed.¹⁶

Printing, Engrossing and Signing

The Journal for July 4 records what happened next. After the text it prints an order: "Ordered, That the declaration be authenticated and printed. That the committee appointed to prepare the declaration, superintend and correct the press. That copies of the declaration be sent to the several assemblies, conventions and committees, or councils of safety, and to the several commanding officers of the continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the army."¹⁶ The printer was John Dunlap. The Library of Congress says he produced the first printed text "late on July 4," that John Hancock began dispatching copies the next day, and that on July 9 George Washington ordered his copy read to the army at New York.¹⁰ The National Archives says a copy of the printing was inserted in the Rough Journal on July 5, followed by the words "Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress, John Hancock, President. Attest. Charles Thomson, Secretary."⁷

The two institutions disagree on how many copies of the broadside survive. The Archives says 26, "21 owned by American institutions, 2 by British institutions, and 3 by private owners," and the Library of Congress says 24.⁷² This lesson could not reconcile the figures. They may count different dates or different holdings. Neither source says how many Dunlap printed.

The engrossed copy came later. After New York's convention approved the action on July 9, Congress on July 19 ordered that the Declaration be "fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and stile of 'The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America,' and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress." The Archives says Timothy Matlack "was probably the engrosser," and quotes the Journal for August 2: "The declaration of independence being engrossed and compared at the table was signed."⁸ The parchment measures 24 1/4 by 29 3/4 inches. John Hancock signed first, and 56 delegates signed in all, though not all were present on August 2. Dickinson and Robert R. Livingston never signed.⁸

A common belief is that all the delegates signed on July 4. The Archives calls this "one of the most widely held misconceptions."⁸ Jefferson's own Autobiography contributes to it, since it says the Declaration was "signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson" on the evening of July 4, and then adds that the paper copy "was engrossed on parchment, and signed again on the 2d of August."¹⁷¹³ The July 4 Journal records the printed attestation by Hancock and Thomson and records no signing by the members.¹⁶⁷ The Journal and the Archives are the better evidence for an August signing, and Jefferson's version is a recollection from 1821.

Signatures were added unevenly. The Harvard Declaration Resources Project says Thomas McKean's name was left off the Goddard broadside of January 1777 and the first printed Journals of 1776, that "most historians believe Thomas McKean signed the engrossed parchment by 1781 at the latest," and that the first printing to include his name was a 1782 collection of Pennsylvania laws.²² The Archives says Congress ordered a second printing on January 18, 1777, "with the names of the members of Congress subscribing to the same," printed by Mary Katherine Goddard in Baltimore.⁸ The names had been kept secret for a time for fear of British reprisals, according to the Archives.⁸

Variants and What They Mean for Readers

A reader who quotes the Declaration should say which text. The adopted text in the Journal of July 4, printed from the engrossed original, and the National Archives transcription agree on the words. Jefferson's reprint in his Autobiography differs in details that did not change meaning, such as "inalienable" in his copy of the report against "unalienable" in the adopted text.¹³¹ The modern spelling in many printings differs again, and Becker, according to the Online Library of Liberty, treated the Rough Journal printing as the most authoritative text.⁵

Two conclusions follow for anyone who writes about the Declaration or quotes it. One is that the phrase "Jefferson's Declaration" has to be used with care. The text is Jefferson's in its structure and in most of its sentences, and the passages that are not his are identifiable. The other is that "what Jefferson wrote" and "what Congress adopted" are two documents with a known difference. The Library of Congress counts 47 alterations before June 28 and 39 after the July 2 vote, which means the Congress that adopted the Declaration made nearly as many individual changes as the committee did.¹⁰ A statement that Congress "edited" the Declaration is therefore accurate, and a statement that Congress "rewrote" it is not.

Key Documents

The documents below are the drafts and printings discussed in this lesson. Where a document is known only by reconstruction, the table says so.

Why This Matters to Idaho Officials and Voters

Anyone who needs to say what a founding or governing text says has to decide which version. Idaho's Legislature publishes each bill with a page that links the bill text, a Statement of Purpose and Fiscal Note, and a dated list of actions, such as "Introduced, read first time, referred to JRA for Printing" and "Reported Printed; Filed in the Office of the Chief Clerk."²³ The Idaho Constitution requires each house to keep a journal of its proceedings.²⁴

The comparison with the Declaration is practical. A voter who wants to know what the Legislature passed can look at the bill text and the journal entry. A reader who wants to know what Congress said in 1776 has to compare a reconstructed draft, a memoir and a transcription. The lesson for Idaho officials and reporters is to cite the version and the date, and to say when a text was amended.

Using This in Reporting and Civic Life

A reporter quoting the Declaration

Reporter Hannah Oyelaran of an invented newspaper wants to quote the line that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." A colleague says Jefferson wrote "inalienable." Hannah checks the National Archives transcription, which reads "unalienable" in the adopted text, and Jefferson's Autobiography, which reprints the report with "inalienable."¹¹³ She quotes the adopted text, cites the archive and adds a note that Jefferson's own copy used the other spelling.

A teacher answering a student

Teacher Luis Moreno of an invented school is asked by a student whether Jefferson wrote "self-evident." Luis explains that the first draft read "sacred & undeniable," that the report of June 28 already read "self evident," and that many popular accounts credit Franklin without a source this lesson could confirm.¹¹¹³ He tells the student that the question is open and shows the two quotations.

A county official citing the slave-trade passage

County Commissioner Rebecca Ashford of an invented Idaho county hears a speaker say Congress "deleted the antislavery clause because of Jefferson's critics." Rebecca checks. The passage did not appear in the adopted text. Jefferson's account says South Carolina and Georgia forced the cut and that northern delegates were "a little tender," and Adams said southern delegates "would never suffer" it to pass. The Journal records no debate or vote on the clause.¹⁷¹²¹⁶ She tells the speaker that the cause is Jefferson's and Adams's testimony, not a record of the debate.

A voter weighing a number

Voter Samir Haddad of an invented town reads that Congress cut "a quarter" of the Declaration. He checks. Adams said Congress "cut off about a quarter," and a count of the Library of Congress's published text of Jefferson's original (1,704 words) against the adopted text (1,320 words) gives a net reduction of about 22 percent.¹²¹¹¹ He describes the figure as roughly a fifth to a quarter, and says why.

Related Modules

• Declaration, Lesson 1: The Road to Independence: the 1774 Resolves and Association behind the draft.
• Declaration, Lesson 2: The Lee Resolution and the Committee of Five: the committee and the conflicting accounts of who drafted.
• Declaration, Lesson 4: The Debates Day by Day: July 1 to 4 and the Journal.
• Declaration, Lesson 5: The Text, Clause by Clause: the adopted text and the sources of its phrases.
• Declaration, Lesson 6: Colony Charters and the First State Constitutions: Jefferson's Virginia draft constitution and its charges.
• Declaration, Lesson 8: The Declaration After 1776: printings, facsimiles and readings of the text.
• Declaration, Lesson 9: The Declaration and the Constitution: how the two documents are compared.

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• Library of Congress, Jefferson's "original Rough draught" (Boyd reconstruction)
• National Archives, Declaration of Independence: A Transcription
• Project Gutenberg, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1 (Autobiography)
• Works of John Adams, vol. 2 (Autobiography and letter to Pickering)
• Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 5 (1906)
• Avalon Project, Jefferson, Draft Constitution for Virginia, June 1776
• Avalon Project, The Articles of Association, October 20, 1774
• Avalon Project, Virginia Convention, May 15, 1776
• Idaho Constitution, art. III, sec. 13
• Idaho Legislature, House Bill 1 (2025), example bill page

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• Library of Congress, Declaring Independence: Timeline
• Library of Congress, Declaring Independence: Essay
• Library of Congress, Declaring Independence: Exhibition
• National Archives, The Declaration of Independence: A History
• Online Library of Liberty, 1776 Declaration of Independence: Various Drafts (summarizing Becker)
• Harvard Declaration Resources Project, Thomas McKean
• Early America, Congress Deletes a Fourth of Jefferson's Text

Footnotes

1. Declaration of Independence, National Archives transcription, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript. Word counts of the adopted text (1,320 words from "When in the Course of human events" through "our sacred Honor"), of its four parts (338 for the opening and the statement of principles, 707 for the indictment and the paragraph on petitions, 117 for the address to the British, and 158 for the conclusion) and the count of 27 charges (the 18 sentences beginning "He" and the 9 clauses beginning "For") were made for this lesson from that transcription.
2. Library of Congress, "Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents," Exhibition, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/declara4.html. The page describes the fragment of the earliest known draft ("all of the undeleted 148 words ... were copied into the 'original Rough draught'"), the "original Rough draught" with "minor emendations in the hands of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin," Jefferson's late endorsement "Independance. Declaration of original Rough draught," and "twenty-four surviving copies" of the Dunlap broadside.
3. Charles Francis Adams, editor's note, The Works of John Adams, vol. 2 (Boston, 1850), pp. 514-515, https://archive.org/details/worksjohnadams02adamrich. The note says Adams left "a transcript, by his own hand, of the Declaration of Independence, very nearly as it appears in Mr. Jefferson's first draught," that none of Franklin's alterations and "but one of the two suggested by himself" appear in it, and that "Several variations occur, however, in the phraseology, and one or two passages are wholly omitted."
4. National Archives, "The Declaration of Independence: A History," https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-history. The page quotes Jefferson's 1823 account (the committee "unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught ... I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections ... I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress"), adds that if Jefferson made a fair copy it "has not been preserved," and gives the history of the Dunlap printing, the engrossed copy and the Goddard printing quoted in this lesson.
5. Online Library of Liberty, "1776 Declaration of Independence: Various Drafts," summarizing Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1776-declaration-of-independence-various-drafts. The page lists the surviving texts, says Franklin wrote in five corrections and Adams two, gives the examples quoted in this lesson, reports that Jefferson added "three new paragraphs and sixteen verbal changes" after Adams returned the draft, that Becker suspects Adams suggested the paragraph on legislatures meeting at inconvenient places, and that Becker treats the Dunlap printing in the Rough Journal as the most authoritative text. This lesson read the summary, not the book.
6. Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 5, entry for June 28, 1776, https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit: "The committee appointed to prepare a declaration, &c. brought in a draught, which was read: Ordered, To lie on the table."
7. National Archives, "The Declaration of Independence: A History," https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-history. The page says there are "26 copies known to exist" of the Dunlap broadside, "21 owned by American institutions, 2 by British institutions, and 3 by private owners," and that on July 5 a printed copy was inserted into the "rough journal" for July 4, followed by "Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress, John Hancock, President. Attest. Charles Thomson, Secretary." The Library of Congress gives 24 copies (see the exhibition page cited above); this lesson could not reconcile the counts.
8. National Archives, "The Declaration of Independence: A History," https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-history. The page quotes the July 19 order that the Declaration be "fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and stile of 'The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America,' and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress"; says Timothy Matlack "was probably the engrosser"; quotes the August 2 Journal entry "The declaration of independence being engrossed and compared at the table was signed"; says the parchment measures 24 1/4 by 29 3/4 inches, that 56 delegates eventually signed, that Dickinson and Robert R. Livingston never signed, and that Congress ordered a second printing on January 18, 1777, printed by Mary Katherine Goddard in Baltimore with the signers' names.
9. Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 5, pp. 491-516 (editorial introduction and notes to the Declaration), https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit. Ford prints a "first draft" from a manuscript in Adams's hand and a "second draft" from the manuscript in the Department of State, with notes. He says the "second draft" shows "the changes made during its consideration in committee and in Congress" and that Jefferson prepared copies for friends, the Madison copy ("MS. A") and the Emmet copy ("MS. B"). In notes he reports that Jefferson wrote "Dr. Franklin" or "Mr. Adams" against several words or phrases on the rough draft. The scanned text of these pages is badly broken by the two-column layout; this lesson used only the notes.
10. Library of Congress, "Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents," Essay, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/declara3.html. The essay says Jefferson made a clean copy labeled "original Rough draught"; that it was "Revised first by Adams, then by Franklin, and then by the full committee"; that "a total of forty-seven alterations including the insertion of three complete paragraphs was made on the text before it was presented to Congress on June 28"; that Congress made "thirty-nine additional revisions"; and that Dunlap printed the first text on July 4, with copies sent from July 5 and Washington's copy read to the army on July 9.
11. Library of Congress, Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence, as reconstructed by Julian P. Boyd, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1950), pp. 243-247, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html. The page gives Jefferson's text before revision by the other members of the Committee of Five and by Congress. The word count of that text (1,704) and the count of its charges were made for this lesson from the page. Quotations from "the original Rough draught" in this lesson are from this reconstruction.
12. John Adams to Timothy Pickering, August 6, 1822, in Works of John Adams, vol. 2, pp. 512-514, https://archive.org/details/worksjohnadams02adamrich. Adams writes: "I was delighted with its high tone and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose"; "Congress cut off about a quarter of it, as I expected they would; but they obliterated some of the best of it, and left all that was exceptionable, if any thing in it was"; and "I suppose the reason is, the vehement philippic against negro slavery."
13. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1 (Washington edition), Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45847. After describing the votes of July 1 and 2, Jefferson writes that Congress took up the Declaration, and then reprints it "as originally reported," with "The parts struck out by Congress ... distinguished by a black line drawn under them and those inserted by them ... placed in the margin." In the Gutenberg text the struck passages appear in brackets and italics. All word counts of struck passages in this lesson were made for this lesson from that printed text and are approximate to within a few dozen words in total.
14. Jefferson, Autobiography, Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45847, bracketed note that Jefferson took notes in his place "while these things were going on, and at their close wrote them out in form and with correctness," and that "Some erroneous statements of the proceedings on the Declaration of Independence having got before the public in latter times, Mr. Samuel A. Wells asked explanations of me, which are given in my letter to him of May 12, '19." This lesson did not read the letter to Wells.
15. Library of Congress, "Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents," Timeline, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/declara2.html. The timeline gives June 12 to 27 for the drafting, June 28 for the reading of a fair copy of the committee draft, July 5 for Hancock's first dispatch of Dunlap broadsides to New Jersey and Delaware, and "Twenty-four copies" of the broadside.
16. Ford, ed., Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 5 (1906), entry for July 4, 1776, https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit. The Journal records that the committee of the whole reported "a Declaration," that "The Declaration being again read, was agreed to," and prints the text with the names of the signers; Ford's note says "The text used is that of the engrossed original in the Department of State." After the text it records: "Ordered, That the declaration be authenticated and printed. That the committee appointed to prepare the declaration, superintend and correct the press. That copies of the declaration be sent to the several assemblies, conventions and committees, or councils of safety, and to the several commanding officers of the continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the army."
17. Jefferson, Autobiography, Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45847. Jefferson writes: "The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out 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. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others." He adds that the debates "having taken up the greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4th days of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed," and that the Declaration was "signed by every member present, except Mr. Dickinson."
18. Early America (Varsity Tutors), "Congress Deletes a Fourth of Jefferson's Text of the Declaration of Independence," https://www.varsitytutors.com/earlyamerica/freedom-documents/congress-deletes-fourth-jeffersons-text-declaration-independence. The page says "more than a quarter of the text was deleted," gives no word count, and says the only specific number it gives, "forty-seven alterations," refers to changes before the draft went to Congress. Read through a summarizing fetch tool.
19. The Articles of Association, October 20, 1774, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_10-20-74.asp, article 2: "We will neither import nor purchase, any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time, we will wholly discontinue the slave trade."
20. Preamble and Resolution of the Virginia Convention, May 15, 1776, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/const02.asp. The preamble says the King's representative was "tempting our slaves by every artifice to resort to him, and training and employing them against their masters."
21. Thomas Jefferson, Draft Constitution for Virginia, June 1776 (fair copy), Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffcons.asp. The preamble begins "Whereas George Guelf king of Great Britain and Ireland ... hath endeavored to pervert the same into a detestable and insupportable tyranny," lists grievances, and includes the clause "No person hereafter coming into this county shall be held within the same in slavery under any pretext whatever." The Avalon page dates the draft June 1776 and does not say whether Congress or the Virginia Convention received it.
22. Harvard Declaration Resources Project, "April Highlight: Missing McKean," https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/april-mckean. The page says McKean's name was left off the Goddard Broadside (1777) and the first Aitken/Dunlap Journals for 1776, that "most historians believe Thomas McKean signed the engrossed parchment by 1781 at the latest," and that the first printing to include his name was Robert Bailey's 1782 Acts of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. Read through a summarizing fetch tool.
23. Idaho Legislature, House Bill 1 (2025), https://legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2025/legislation/H0001/. The page links "Bill Text" and "Statement of Purpose / Fiscal Note" and lists dated actions ("Introduced, read first time, referred to JRA for Printing"; "Reported Printed; Filed in the Office of the Chief Clerk").
24. Idaho Constitution, art. III, sec. 13, Idaho Legislature, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtIII/Sect13/.