But if Jefferson and his colleagues on the Committee of Five avoided specifying what a national government should look like, ...

Amid contention, criticism, and compromise, a divided nation had to present a unified front. It came at a cost.

When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1775, it was far from clear that the delegates would pass a resolution to separate from Great Britain. To persuade them, someone needed ...

Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, but Thomas Jefferson wrote it with an eye on July 6, 1776. Two days after the Continental Congress approved the document, it was read ...

Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence. It wasn’t widely known that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence until a quarter century later when he stood for ...

It must have been a peculiar sight: The author of the Declaration of Independence, seated in his Monticello mansion, cutting the Bible into pieces. But such was the pastime of Thomas Jefferson during ...