Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?

Why this is the answer

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. His first name sits in parentheses in the official answer, so "Jefferson" alone is accepted. The Declaration came out of the Second Continental Congress, which met in 1775 after fighting with the British army had already begun. Congress asked Jefferson and others to prepare it. Jefferson wrote the draft and took it to John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and the rest of the committee, who made changes before the text was read to the full Congress. That history fits a detail of the test: Franklin's list of accepted answers includes "helped write the Declaration of Independence," while this question accepts only Jefferson, who wrote the draft. In the Declaration, Jefferson argued that the colonies should be independent because Britain did not respect the basic rights of the people living in them. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the people create their own government and agree to follow the laws it makes, the idea known as the consent of the governed. He followed that with a list of the colonists' complaints against the King and closed by declaring the colonies free and independent states. Congress adopted the document on July 4, 1776, the date Americans celebrate as Independence Day. In the list of signers, Jefferson's name appears among the delegates from Virginia, and Franklin's and John Adams's appear under Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. An easy slip at the interview is naming another founder. Washington, Madison and Hamilton each have their own question later in this section, and none of them is the answer here. Franklin is the trickiest choice because he did work on the text, but as one of the reviewers of Jefferson's draft rather than its author. If you need an anchor, tie the man to the ideas: Jefferson wrote the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and he wrote the document it comes from.