Committee of Five

The Committee of Five of the Second Continental Congress was

a group of five members who drafted and presented to the full
Congress in Pennsylvania State House what would become the
United States Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. This
Declaration committee operated from June 11, 1776, until July 5,
1776, the day on which the Declaration was published.

The committee was composed of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin,

Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman.
John Trumbull's 1818 painting of the
Committee of Five presenting their
draft of the Declaration of
The Committee of Five Independence to the Second
Continental Congress in
The members of this committee were: Philadelphia. From left to right: John
Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert
John Adams, representative of Massachusetts, who later Livingston, Thomas Jefferson,
became the second president of the United States[1] Benjamin Franklin.
Thomas Jefferson, representative of Virginia, who later
became the third president of the United States[2]
Benjamin Franklin, representative of Pennsylvania,
known as one of the most famous intellectuals among
the Founding Fathers, whose academic writings and
press publications had a very significant influence in the
American Revolution, the only person to sign the
Declaration of Independence, Treaty of Alliance with
France, Treaty of Paris, and U.S. Constitution
Roger Sherman, representative of Connecticut, the only
person to sign all four of the U.S. state papers: the
Continental Association, the Declaration, the Articles of The Jefferson Memorial depicts the
[3]
Confederation, and the Constitution. Sherman Committee of Five on a pediment
proposed the Connecticut Compromise. sculpture by Adolph Alexander
Weinman.
Robert Livingston, representative of New York, who later
served as the first United States Secretary of Foreign
Affairs, administered the presidential oath of office at the
First inauguration of George Washington and negotiated the Louisiana Purchase as the
minister to France.[4]

Drafting of the Declaration of Independence

The delegates of the Thirteen Colonies in Congress resolved to postpone until Monday, July 1, the final
consideration of whether or not to declare the several sovereign independencies of the Colonies, which
had been proposed by the North Carolina resolutions of April 12 and the Virginia resolutions of May 15.
The proposal, known as the Lee Resolution, was moved in Congress on June 7 by Richard Henry Lee of
Virginia. During these allotted three weeks Congress agreed to
appoint a committee to draft a statement to outline the reasons
for the Colonies seceding from the British Empire. The actual
declaration of "American Independence" is precisely the text
comprising the final paragraph of the published broadside of
July 4. The broadside's final paragraph repeated the text of the
Lee Resolution as adopted by the declaratory resolve voted on
July 2.

On June 11, the Committee of Five was appointed: John Adams Congress Voting Independence, by
of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Robert Edge Pine (1784–1788), depicts
Livingston of New York, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, the Committee of Five in the center
and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Because the committee left
no minutes, there is some uncertainty about how the drafting
process proceeded. Accounts written many years later by
Jefferson and Adams, although frequently cited, vary in some
respects.[5]

The first draft

After discussing the general outline of the document, the
Second Continental Congress decided that Jefferson would
write the first draft.[6] With Congress's busy schedule, Jefferson
had limited time to write the draft over the ensuing 17 days.[7]
He then consulted with the others on the committee, who
reviewed the draft and made extensive changes.[8] Jefferson
then produced another copy incorporating these alterations.

Among the changes was the simplification of what Jefferson

had termed "preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of Writing the Declaration of
happiness" to the more succinct and sonorous phrase familiar Independence, 1776, Jean Leon
to all today, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. This Gerome Ferris' idealized 1900 depiction
of (left to right) Benjamin Franklin, John
shares some similarities with, but is distinct from, John Locke's
Adams, and Thomas Jefferson of the
prior description of private property as a natural right, in the Committee of Five working on the
phrase "life, liberty, and estate".[9] Declaration.

Jefferson's first draft also considered a scathing criticism of

Great Britain's use of slavery, which was later removed in order to avoid offending slaveholders.[10]

Presentation of the draft

On June 28, 1776, the committee presented this copy to the "Committee of the Whole" Congress, which
was commemorated by Trumbull’s famed painting. The title of the document was "A Declaration by the
Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled".[11]
The signing
Although not officially noted, the estimated time was 6:26 p.m. (18:26 LMT) for the recording of this
historic vote. The Congress then heard the report of the Committee of the Whole and declared the
sovereign status of the United Colonies the following day, during the afternoon of July 2. The Committee
of the Whole then turned to the Declaration, and it was given a second reading before adjournment.[12]

Last minute arguments

On Wednesday, July 3, the Committee of the Whole gave the Declaration the third reading and
commenced scrutiny of the precise wording of the proposed text. But for two passages in the Committee
of Five's draft that were rejected by the Committee of the Whole the work was accepted without any other
major changes. One was a critical reference to the English people and the other was a denunciation of the
slave trade and of slavery itself.

Jefferson wrote in his autobiography, of the two deleted passages:

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 offense. 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 these censures, for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been
pretty considerable carriers of them to others.[13]

As John Adams recalled many years later, this work of editing the proposed text was largely completed
by the time of adjournment on July 3. However, the text's formal adoption was deferred until the
following morning, when the Congress voted its agreement during the late morning of July 4.[14][15]

Fair copy
The draft document as adopted was then referred back to the Committee of Five to prepare a "fair copy",
this being the redrafted-as-corrected document prepared for delivery to the broadside printer, John
Dunlap. And so the Committee of Five convened in the early evening of July 4 to complete its task.[16]

Historians have had no documentary means by which to determine the identity of the authenticating party.
It is unclear whether the Declaration was authenticated by the Committee of Five's signature, or the
Committee submitted the fair copy to President Hancock for his authenticating signature, or the
authentication awaited President John Hancock's signature on the printer's finished proof-copy of what
became known as the Dunlap broadside. Either way, upon the July 5 release of the Dunlap Broadside of
the Declaration, the Committee of Five's work was done.[17]
The Dunlap broadside release to the public
Following release of the Dunlap broadside on July 5, the public
could read who had signed the Declaration. Hancock's signature,
as President of the Continental Congress, appears on the
broadside, as does that of Continental Congress Secretary Charles
Thomson in an attest. Memories of the participants proved to be
very short on this particular historic moment. Not three decades
had elapsed by which time the prominent members of the
Committee of Five could no longer recollect either detail of what
had actually taken place, or their active participation, on July 4
and 5 of 1776. And so during these early decades was born the The Committee of Five, pictured on
durable myth of one grand ceremonial general signing on July 4, an 1869 U.S. Postal Service 24-cent
by all the delegates to Congress.[18] stamp; the same image also
appears on the present two-dollar
bill.

See also
Founding Fathers of the United States
Committee of Detail, drafted the United States Constitution

References
1. "John Adams" (https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/john
-adams/). The White House. Retrieved June 10, 2021.
2. "Thomas Jefferson" (https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/about-the-white-house/president
s/thomas-jefferson/). The White House. Retrieved June 10, 2021.
3. Mangan, Gregg (October 10, 2020). "Roger Sherman, Revolutionary and Dedicated Public
Servant" (https://connecticuthistory.org/roger-sherman-revolutionary-and-dedicated-public-s
ervant/). Connecticut History, a CT Humanities Project. Retrieved June 10, 2021.
4. Beagle, Ben (February 23, 2021). "Livingston County marks 200 years" (https://www.thelcn.
com/news/livingston-county-marks-200-years/article_b9bb1eba-7621-11eb-a0db-03995892
4bd2.html). Livingston County News. Retrieved June 10, 2021.
5. Maier, American Scripture, 97–105; Boyd, Evolution, 21.
6. Boyd, Evolution, 22.
7. Maier,American Scripture, 104.
8. "Exhibition – Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents | Exhibitions – Library of
Congress" (https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/declara4.html). Library of Congress. July 4,
1995. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20160806172853/http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/d
eclara/declara4.html) from the original on August 6, 2016. Retrieved February 18, 2010.,
retrieved on October 29, 2013
9. Locke, John (1988) [1689]. Laslett, Peter (ed.). Two Treatises of Government (https://archiv
e.org/details/twotreatisesofgo00john). Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press. Sec.
87, 123, 209, 222. ISBN 052135448X.
10. Williams, Yohuru. "Why Thomas Jefferson's Anti-Slavery Passage Was Removed from the
Declaration of Independence" (https://www.history.com/news/declaration-of-independence-d
eleted-anti-slavery-clause-jefferson). HISTORY. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
11. Becker, Declaration of Independence, 4.
12. For verification of the afternoon July 2 date of this vote of Congress, see Harold Eberlein &
Cortlandt Hubbard, Diary of Independence Hall (J.B. Lippincott Co., 1948), entry: Tuesday,
July 2, 1776, pp. 171–72. See also John M. Coleman, THOMAS MCKEAN; Forgotten
Leader of the Revolution (American Faculty Press, 1975), Chapter 11: Independence 1776,
p. 174. See also Jane Harrington Scott, A Gentleman As Well As a Whig: Caesar Rodney
and the American Revolution (University of Delaware Press, 2000), Chapter 15:
Independence is Declared, p. 117 therein. Speculatively, an estimated time moment interval
of 14:00 LMT up to 18:00 LMT appears to be the period during which this day's historic
events reached completion by the vote in Congress and the newspaper report of
independence declared.
13. Autobiography, by Thomas Jefferson (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffauto.asp)
14. A New Jersey delegate to Congress, Abraham Clark, wrote to his friend Elias Dayton during
the early morning of July 4, explaining Congress' recent editing of the Declaration:

Our Congress Resolved to Declare the United Colonies Free and the
Independent States. A Declaration for this purpose, I expect, will this day pass
Congress, it is nearly gone through, after which it will be Proclaimed with all the
State & Solemnity Circumstances will admit. It is gone so far that we must now
be a free independent State, or a Conquered Country.

So wrote Abraham Clark to Elias Dayton, in of Delegates to Congress, Vol. 4 May 16, 1776
– August 15, 1776, p. 378.

15. For verification of the late morning July 4 time of Congress' agreement to the text of the
Declaration, see Paul H. Smith, "Time and Temperature: Philadelphia, July 4, 1776", in The
Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, Vol. 33, No. 4, October 1976, p. 296. See also
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Alfred A.
Knopf, 1997), Chapter III: Mr. Jefferson and His Editors, p. 150. Speculatively, an estimated
time moment interval of 10:30 LMT up to 11:00 LMT appears to be the least unlikely period
during which the voted adoption of the precise wording of the text of the Declaration was
completed.
16. For corroboration of time (16:45 to 18:35 LMT) of the completion of the 'fair copy' of the
Declaration by the Committee of Five, see Edward Channing, A History of the United States.
(N.Y: The MacMillan Co., 1912), Volume III: The American Revolution, 1761–1789; Chapter
VII: The Declaration of Independence, pp. 182–209, wherein July 4th, p. 205. See also
Edward Channing, A Short History of the United States. (N.Y: The MacMillan Co., 1908),
Chapter V-15: The Great Declaration and the French Alliance, p. 146.
17. The Congress left no record of when, during the night of July 4/5, President John Hancock
affixed his authenticating signature to either the Committee's fair copy of the Dunlap
broadside master copy (the printer's proof-copy). On the extant original copies of the printed
broadside, one finds this: "Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress, JOHN
HANCOCK, President." For a scholarly appraisal of this national tragedy of the absent
record of Hancock's signature moment, see Julian P. Boyd, "The Declaration of
Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original", in The Pennsylvania Magazine. Vol. C,
No. 4, October 1976, pp. 438–67.
18. Congress may have taken as little as 33 days from the debates of July 1 to the opening of
business on August 2, to establish "THE unanimous DECLARATION of the thirteen united
STATES OF AMERICA", being the revised-format edition of the July 4 Declaration. This
'unanimous thirteen' edition remains on permanent public display, enshrined in the rotunda
of the National Archives at Washington, D.C. For a partially successful effort to piece
together the fragmented record of the genesis of the Declaration's creation during this 33-
day interval, see Wilfred J. Ritz, "The Authentication of the Engrossed Declaration of
Independence on July 4, 1776", in the Cornell Law School's Law and History Review. Vol. 4,
No. 1, Spring 1986, pp. 179–204. See also, Herbert Friedenwald, The Declaration of
Independence: An Interpretation and an Analysis. (MacMillan & Co., 1904), pp. 138–51.

External links
Lee Resolution (https://web.archive.org/web/20090505212045/http://thedeclarationofindepe
ndence.org/leeresolution/): "The Lee Resolution of June 7, 1776, born of the Virginia
Resolve of May 15, 1776".
Dunlap broadside: The Dunlap broadside of the Declaration of Independence, as first
published on July 5, 1776, entitled "A DECLARATION By The Representatives of the
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA In General Congress assembled".
Goddard broadside: The Goddard broadside of the Declaration of Independence, as first
published on January 31, 1777, entitled "The unanimous DECLARATION of the Thirteen
United States of AMERICA".

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