How long did the Declaration take?

Question

How long did it take Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence?

Answer 1

The drafting committee left no formal records of its proceedings, and the private notes that Jefferson kept devote only a few sentences to the subject. The story of the Declaration's creation must be pieced together from a handful of documents of the time and from accounts by Jefferson and Adams, most of which were written long after the event and sometimes contradict each other. Before appointing a draftsman, it seems likely that the committee met, discussed how the document should be organized, and perhaps wrote "minutes" or instructions, as Adams said. Probably, as Jefferson claimed, he alone was asked to write the document.

In the previous few weeks, Jefferson had drafted a preamble for Virginia's new constitution. He clearly modeled its opening paragraph on the British Declaration of Rights (February 1689), which charged King James II with attempting to "subvert and extirpate" both the Protestant religion and the "Laws and Liberties of this Kingdom." Jefferson similarly accused George III of attempting to establish "a detestable & insupportable tyranny" in Virginia, and then listed a series of transgressions that, like those in the British Declaration, began with the word "by." Now he returned to a draft of his Virginia preamble that remained among his papers, rearranging and expanding the list of grievances for use in the Declaration of Independence. However, rather than start with a "Whereas" clause, as had both his Virginia preamble and its British predecessor, Jefferson proposed a magnificent opening paragraph beginning "When in the course of human events." It identified what followed as having significance far beyond America and Britain alone.

Jefferson's famous second paragraph, which began "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable," expressed ideas widely shared among the colonists. Its language, however, owed much to an early version of the VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS written by George chMason. Jefferson took phrases from the Mason draft, compressed them, then added language of his own to construct a single long sentence, based on a standard eighteenth-century rhetorical device that prescribed a series of phrases whose meaning became clear only at the end. The Mason draft said, for example, "all men are born equally free and independent." Jefferson wrote instead "that all men are created equal & independent," then crossed out "& independent." The Mason draft asserted that men had "certain inherent natural rights" that they could not "by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Jefferson wrote instead that men had "inherent & inalienable rights" including "life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness." To secure those rights, he added, "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." He concluded his series of phrases with a powerful assertion of the people's right to abolish and replace a government that became destructive of their rights—in short, of the right of revolution, which the Americans were exercising in 1776. That right should not, he went on to say, be invoked for "light & transient causes," but it became not only the people's right but also their "duty to throw off" a government guilty of "a long train of abuses & usurpations" moving toward the establishment of "arbitrary power." And the reign of George III, Jefferson asserted, was "a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations," directed toward "the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the American states.

A long list of examples, or charges against the king, followed. They began not with "by" but with the more emphatic words "he has." The first set of charges recalled somewhat obscure grievances suffered by a specific colony or group of colonies; then, under a charge that "he had combined with others" to perform certain acts, the list recalled more familiar acts of Parliament that had received the royal assent. A final section cited recent events, such as the king's "declaring us out of his allegiance & protection" by approving the Prohibitory Act and employing "large armies of foreign mercenaries" against his American subjects. The Jefferson draft also charged the king with responsibility for the slave trade. A king "whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant," the draft said, "is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free." A rambling, angry penultimate section castigated the British people for supporting King and Parliament. Then, in its final paragraph, the draft declared "these colonies to be free and independent states" with all the rights of such states. "And for the support of this declaration," it ended, "we"—the delegates who would in time sign the document—"mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honor."

Jefferson sketched out parts of the draft on scraps of paper, some of which survive, then copied the whole to show to other members of the committee. He also used that copy—the "original Rough draught," as he called it, which is now at the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS—to record all subsequent editorial changes. Jefferson submitted the draft to John Adams, who made a complete copy of the document as it stood when he saw it, and also to Benjamin Franklin, who was recovering from a severe attack of gout. They suggested some changes, and Jefferson initiated others. Then, he told James Madison in 1823, he submitted the revised document to the committee, which sent it "unaltered" to Congress. However, a note he sent to Franklin with an already revised draft in June 1776 tells a different tale. "The inclosed paper has been read and with some small alterations approved by the committee," it said. Would Franklin please "peruse it and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate? The paper having been returned to me to change a particular sentiment or two, I propose laying it again before the committee tomorrow morning." Clearly the draft was a collaborative effort, and some of the changes that appear on the "rough draft" in Jefferson's handwriting were mandated by the committee.

Answer 2

15-20 seconds

Answer 3

It was written in a very short time... less than a week. You might try contacting Independance Hall in Philidelphia and asking them, I'm sure they would know.