On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed five men to prepare a declaration that the colonies were independent: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. The committee gave the drafting to Jefferson, who was thirty-three and had been in Congress for about a year.² Over the next two weeks he wrote, showed his pages to Adams and Franklin, and reported them to the committee. The sheet he worked from survives in the Libra