As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week, Jonathan writes about the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors
When young speechwriters (I was once one) start at the White House, they receive some version of the same talking-to: Remember the speech is the president’s, not yours. He doesn’t have all day to spend hunched over a computer. Write what he would if he had the time.
Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, it was members of the Continental Congress who were in need of words and short of time to write them. Had it occurred to anyone that the Declaration of Independence would one day become America’s most revered document, the assignment would surely not have fallen to one of Virginia’s junior delegates, Thomas Jefferson.
On June 11, 1776, as discussed in last week’s newsletter, Congress appointed a committee to draft a declaration in the expectation that Richard Henry Lee’s motion for independence would pass in a few weeks’ time. Who on the committee would wield the pen was left to the discretion of its five members: John Adams of Massachusetts; Roger Sherman of Connecticut; Robert Livingston of New York; Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania; and the lanky 33-year-old Jefferson, who made a habit of keeping his lips closed and his arms crossed.
