The Committee’s Draft as Presented to the Continental Congress
Exhibit Table of Contents
Congress Considers the Declaration
On June 28, the committee reported the draft Declaration of Independence to Congress, where it was read and ordered to lie on the table. Congress proceeded with regular business, including the manufacturing of sulfur and treasury matters before adjourning. On Monday, July 1, Congress continued the debate around independence, but the serious and divisive nature of the issue stretched the debate into yet another day. On the 2nd, Congress agreed to the resolution of independency that had been introduced by Richard Henry Lee on June 7 and resolved to “take into their farther consideration the declaration on independence” the next day.
The document likely lay upon the table for several days, available for close inspection by members of Congress.
On July 3, the Committee of the Whole began debating and revising the Declaration, which took much of that day and continued into the next. Congress removed or rephrased up to a quarter of the text, especially in the section listing charges against the crown. Among the most consequential removals was the accusation that held the Crown responsible for the slave trade and prevalence of slavery in America (see page 3 in the exhibit below). The section was cut completely.
There are few records describing the discussions in Congress or identifying which delegates suggested specific changes. But Jefferson, in his Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, drawn together sometime before June 1783, gave his perspective on some of alterations:
Congress proceeded the same day to consider the declaration of Independance, which had been reported & laid on the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a commee. of the whole. 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 & 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 tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.
The changes that Congress made to the committee draft can be seen in the images and transcriptions below. For more on the text of the Declaration as it was finalized by Congress, see the page on the Final Declaration of Independence.
The manuscript and transcription below represent the text as it appeared when the committee submitted the Declaration to Congress and shows the alterations made to the text by Congress. The images are of a copy made by Jefferson shortly after the Declaration was finalized in Congress. He made at least four copies of the committee’s draft, which he marked to show some of the changes made by Congress and sent to friends and colleagues. This copy, often known as the “Cassius F. Lee Copy,” was likely made for George Wythe, but it could possibly be the copy that Jefferson made for Edmund Pendleton, Philip Mazzei, or John Page. It is held at the New York Public Library. This copy and the two additional extant copies in Jefferson’s hand, along with a version he copied into his Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, are largely identical excepting minor differences in punctuation and capitalization. The changes that Congress made to the text were identified by comparing the draft that the committee presented to the text of the Declaration as the delegates adopted it on July 4.
Jefferson’s copies of the Committee Draft made after the Declaration’s adoption by Congress:
“Cassius F. Lee Copy.” In Jefferson’s hand, likely made for George Wythe, but possibly for Edmund Pendleton, Philip Mazzei, or John Page. Manuscript in the Thomas Addis Emmet Collection at the New York Public Library.
Richard Henry Lee Copy. In Jefferson’s hand, made for Lee. Manuscript in the Richard Henry Lee Papers at the American Philosophical Society.
“Washburn Copy.” In Jefferson’s hand, likely made for Edmund Pendleton or John Page. Manuscript in the Jefferson Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Committee’s Draft as Presented to the Continental Congress
On the left below are images of the manuscript images of the Committee’s Draft for Congress of the Declaration of Independence. Click the arrows to page through the images (pages 1 through 4). Move your cursor over the page to use a magnifier to view the text in greater detail.
Alongside manuscript page images, a transcription box displays the state of the text when it was submitted to Congress with pop-up notes to show changes made by Congress.
The pop-up notes describe changes in wording, phrasing, and order. Changes in capitalization and punctuation have not been individually noted. Most underlining in this document represents changes made by Congress; see pop-up notes for details on each change. Words underlined for emphasis in the manuscript are displayed in italics (see “original Rough draught,” Tab: Committee Edits).
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The Committee’s Draft Text
A Declaration by the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent & inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness. prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light & transient causes. and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses & usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government & to provide new guards for their future security. such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government. the history of the present king of Great Britain, is a history of unremitting injuries & usurpations, among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest; but all have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome & necessary for the public good:
he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate & pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; & when so suspended, he has neglected utterly to attend to them.
he has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them & formidable to tyrants only:
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he has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, & distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures:
he has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly & continually for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people:
he has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, & convulsions within:
he has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither; & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands:
he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these states, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers:
he has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices & the amount & paiment of their salaries:
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power, & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people & eat out their substance:
he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies & ships of war, without the consent of our legislatures:
he has affected to render the military independant of, and superior to, the civil power:
he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions, and unacknoleged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation
for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;
for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
for imposing taxes on us without our consent;
for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences;
for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging it’s boundaries, so as to render it at once an example & fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states;
for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws; and altering
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fundamentally the forms of our governments;
for suspending our own legislatures & declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever:
he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors, & declaring us out of his allegiance & protection:
he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, & destroyed the lives of our people:
he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation:
he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions of existence:
he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property:
he has constrained others, taken captives on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
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: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
in every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man adventured within the short compass of twelve years only, to build a foundation, so broad & undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered & fixed in principles of freedom.
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Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. we have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a jurisdiction over these our states. we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration & settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own blood & treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league & amity with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and we appealed to their native justice & magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our connection & correspondence. they too have been deaf to the voice of justice & of consanguinity, and when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have by their free election re-established them in power. at this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade & destroy us. these facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. we might have been a free & a great people together; but a communication of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. be it so, since they will have it: the road to happiness and to glory is open to us too; we will climb it apart from them, and acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our eternal separation!
We therefore the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, do, in the name & by authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain, and all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us & the parliament or people of Great Britain; and finally we do assert these colonies to be free & independent states, and that as free & independant states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, & to do all other acts and things which independant states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honor.
Source: “Cassius F. Lee Copy.” Manuscript, in Jefferson’s hand, likely made for George Wythe, but possibly for Edmund Pendleton, Philip Mazzei, or John Page. Manuscript in the Thomas Addis Emmet Collection at the New York Public Library.
The words “inherent &” were replaced by “certain” in the final version of the Declaration.
The phrase “begun at a distinguished period” was deleted from the final version of the Declaration.
The word “expunge” was replaced by “alter” in the final version of the Declaration.
The word “unremitting” was replaced by “repeated” in the final version of the Declaration.
The word “have” was replaced by “having” in the final version of the Declaration.
The words “neglected utterly” were changed to “utterly neglected” in the final version of the Declaration.
The words “& continually” were deleted from the final version of the Declaration.
The word “suffered” was replaced by “obstructed” in the final version of the Declaration.
The phrase “by a self-assumed power” was deleted from the final version of the Declaration.
The phrase “& ships of war” was deleted from the final version of the Declaration.
After “us,” the phrase “in many Cases” was added in the final version of the Declaration.
The word “states” was changed to “colonies” in the final version of the Declaration.
The phrase “withdrawing his governors” was deleted from the final version of the Declaration.
After “perfidy,” the words “scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally” were added in the final version of the Declaration.
Here “&” was changed to “by” in the final version of the Declaration.
Here “allegiance & protection:” was changed to “Protection and waging War against us” in the final version of the Declaration.
Before “endeavored,” the phrase “excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has” was added in the final version of the Declaration.
The charge “he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property:” was deleted from the final version of the Declaration.
The paragraph beginning “he has constrained” was relocated to follow the paragraph beginning “he is at this time transporting large armies” in the final version of the Declaration.
The word “others” was changed to “our fellow Citizens” in the final Declaration.
With the exception of the phrase “he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us,” noted below, the paragraph from “he has waged cruel war” through “with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another” was deleted from the final version of the Declaration.
The phrase ” he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us,” was reworded and incorporated into the paragraph beginning “He has endeavored,” above, to read
“He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions”
in the final version of the Declaration.
The phrase “people who mean to be free” was replaced by “free people” in the final version of the Declaration.
The phrase “these our states” was replaced by “us” in the final version of the Declaration.
The section “and when occasions” through “eternal separation!” was partially deleted and partially reordered in the final version of the Declaration to read:
We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.
The section
“do, in the name & by authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain, and all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us & the parliament or people of Great Britain; and finally we do assert these colonies to be free & independent states,”
was replaced by
“appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved;”
in the final version of the Declaration.
After “this Declaration,” “with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence” was added in the final version of the Declaration.
Additional Reading
Library of Congress, Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 34 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1904-37), 5:491-516.
Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, 7 June–1 August 1776, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1:299-329.
John H. Hazelton, The Declaration of Independence: Its History (New York, 1906), 156-80.
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), 144-50.