The Declarations of Independence?

The Fourth of July is one of the most important holidays in the United States. For Americans, it commemorates the colonists’ decision to declare their independence from the British king and his empire and found their own nation. Thomas Jefferson, although he was the third president of the United States, will perhaps be best remembered for having expressed the colonists’ grievances with the king in one of the most famous documents in American history, the Declaration of Independence. 

In American lore, we tend to think of Jefferson as having written the Declaration in a burst of inspiration on the Fourth of July in 1776. Did you know, however, that there were in fact several drafts of the document? Although Jefferson did the majority of the writing in June of 1776, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and other members of the Continental Congress suggested various changes. Finally, the Congress officially accepted the document on the fourth of July. 

Jefferson had been working on the ideas that made up the Declaration for some time, but not all of them made it to the final draft. Perhaps most famously, a condemnation of England’s role in the slave trade was objected to by some members of the Congress and left out of the final draft.

This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: The Declarations of Independence?