Thomas Jefferson

The Declaration of Independence

Fair Copy Manuscript

Philadelphia, July 1776

NYPL, Manuscripts and Archives Division

In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson was appointed by the Second Continental Congress to draft an eloquent statement declaring the independence of the British colonies in North America from the Crown. Drawing on the Virginia Bill of Rights, state and local declarations of independence, and the philosophers of the Enlightenment, Jefferson finished his draft in only two days. The entire Congress then met to edit the document (Jefferson characterized their work as mutilation), which was ratified on July 4. Ironically, among the deleted passages was a long condemnation of slavery. In the days following ratification, Jefferson made five copies of his original draft, underlining those passages that Congress had expunged, and sent the copies to five friends. This is one of three known surviving copies.

Since this manuscript was donated in 1896 to The New York Public Library as an inaugural present, it has left the Library’s premises only four times. During World War II, it was removed for safekeeping to a vault in Saratoga Springs, New York; in 1984 it was sent to Philadelphia for conservation treatment; in 1998 it traveled to an exhibition in Washington, D.C.; and in the Spring of 2000, it was displayed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France as part of this exhibition.

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