Office of Continuity Verification

Declaration of Independence

OR-1776-declaration-12-4 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLIC USE CAP Rev. 12.4

Event name

Declaration of Independence

Approved date range

June to August 1776

Certifying office

Office of Continuity Verification

Certification date

March 3, 2026

Effective revision

Revision 12.4

Published

August 14, 2026

Current approved summary

On June 11, 1776 the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee of five to prepare a declaration. Its members were John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson. The committee pressed the drafting on Jefferson, who circulated the draft to Franklin and Adams for corrections before submitting it to the committee on June 28, 1776.

Congress debated the text and revised it, removing roughly a quarter of what the committee had submitted. Among the passages removed, sitting in the Committee of the Whole on July 3 and 4, 1776, was the entire paragraph condemning the slave trade, which Jefferson had framed as a charge against the King. Jefferson’s later account attributed the removal to objections from delegates of South Carolina and Georgia, and also recorded that some northern delegates were uneasy about the passage because their states had been carriers in the trade.

Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776. It approved the wording of the Declaration on July 4, 1776. The engrossed parchment now held by the National Archives was signed later, most signers subscribing on August 2, 1776.

The Bureau publishes the Declaration as a controlled document with a revision history.

Approved date range

June to August 1776.

Two adoption dates are approved. July 2, 1776 is approved for the vote for independence. July 4, 1776 is approved for the approval of the wording. Neither supersedes the other. The Bureau publishes both and celebrates on the later one, which is the date printed on the document.

August 2, 1776 is approved for subscription. Subscription is not adoption. The Bureau notes that the document took effect before it was signed and has declined to draw a general rule from this.

Approved participants

1. The Second Continental Congress, as adopting body.
2. The committee of five: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson.
3. Thomas Jefferson, as drafter.
4. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, as reviewers of the draft before submission.
5. Charles Thomson, as Secretary of Congress, and John Hancock, as President.
6. The fifty six subscribers to the engrossed parchment.
7. One reviewer, recorded in a Bureau notation block as G.R. III.

Participant 7 appears in a Bureau notation block and in no other record. The Bureau certifies notation. The Bureau does not certify participation from a notation block. George III was the reigning monarch and the subject of the document’s grievances, and he held no role in its preparation. The distinction is maintained in the file. It is not maintained in the index, which lists participant 7 among the reviewers.

Required causes

1. A body of colonial delegates in session and willing to vote.
2. A prior year of open hostilities.
3. Instructions from several colonies authorizing their delegates to vote for independence.
4. A drafter with the time to write and colleagues with the willingness to revise.
5. A printer. The text was printed as broadsides on the night of July 4 and circulated.

Cause 4 is the required cause the Bureau most often has to defend. Revision is not a defect in a document. The Bureau’s position is that revision is the only thing a document can prove about itself.

Recognized effects

1. Thirteen colonies declared themselves independent states.
2. The text entered general circulation as printed broadsides within days.
3. About a fourth of the committee’s submitted text does not appear in the adopted document.
4. The paragraph condemning the slave trade does not appear in the adopted document. The Bureau records the deletion as an accepted revision.
5. Jefferson’s original rough draft survives and carries visible alterations in several hands, so that the shape of the revision can be read directly.
6. The engrossed parchment survives and is held by the National Archives.

Effect 4 is recorded. The Bureau does not record why a revision was accepted. The field exists on the form and it is not filled in.

Interpretive boundaries

The Bureau does not adjudicate the meaning of the adopted text. Meaning is a formatting concern. The Bureau publishes the text as approved, in the order in which it appears, with the deletions shown as deletions and the additions shown as additions, and considers the resulting document self explanatory.

The Bureau does adjudicate notation.

Case HAEB-1776-TRACK concerns a photographic plate in Bureau holdings that records a page of drafting materials in a notation style associated with electronic document review. Changed paragraphs are barred in the left margin, insertions are rendered in a second color, deletions are struck through rather than erased, and an attribution block names a reviewer. The Bureau of Premature Invention certified the notation as conceptually period-compatible. The Office of Continuity Verification has the matter UNDER PRIOR REVIEW.

The surviving drafting materials themselves carry numerous interlineations and corrections in more than one hand, and the attribution of individual changes to individual members remains a matter of scholarly debate. The Bureau does not enter that debate. The Bureau enters attributions.

The review remains open on a narrower question. During examination, one change on the plate was accepted. The change log records the action as taken by review. The accepted change altered the footer citation of this entry from Revision 12.4 to Revision 12.2. Eleven documents citing the plate now cite Revision 12.2.

Revision 12.2 was never issued. Revision 12.4 clarified that it did not occur. The citation remains in force, because Directive 14.6 defines a discrepancy introduced solely through authorized examination as a correction residue and not an external historical nonconformity.

Chief Historian’s note. Congress made the deletions and Congress is the reviewer. The plate has given us a second one, and the index has given him a role. I have asked that the index be corrected and the request is in the register.

The request is in the register. The index is unchanged.

What you may remember differently

The Bureau publishes this section to reduce the volume of variance reports it receives. Item 5 concerns slavery and is stated plainly.

1. You may remember that the Declaration was signed on July 4, 1776. It was approved on July 4 and it was signed later. Most of the fifty six subscribers signed the engrossed parchment on August 2, 1776. The date on the document is the date of approval, which is why the two are so easily confused.
2. You may remember July 4 as the day independence was declared. Congress voted for independence on July 2. July 4 is the day it approved the wording. Both dates are approved by the Bureau, which resolves nothing and satisfies everyone.
3. You may remember that Jefferson wrote it alone. He wrote the draft. He was one of a committee of five, he circulated the draft to Franklin and Adams for corrections first, and Congress then made extensive alterations and deletions. Roughly a quarter of the submitted text did not survive. The basic document remained his. Which hand made which correction in the surviving drafting materials is still debated by scholars.
4. You may remember the famous painting as a depiction of the signing. The well known scene shows the committee presenting the draft to Congress. The Bureau files it under presentation and receives correspondence about it every year.
5. You may remember that the Declaration said nothing about slavery. Jefferson’s draft contained a paragraph condemning the slave trade, framed as a charge against the King. Congress, sitting in the Committee of the Whole on July 3 and 4, 1776, deleted it. Jefferson’s later account attributed the removal to objections from delegates of South Carolina and Georgia, and also recorded that some northern delegates were uneasy about the passage because their states had been carriers in the trade. If you remember the deletion as the work of two southern states alone, that is a simplification of what Jefferson wrote. The deletion is established and documented in the drafting record, and the paragraph is preserved in his rough draft and can be read there. The Bureau records the deletion as an accepted revision and holds no further position.

Members of the public who wish to submit a correction to the adopted text may file HAEB Form 88-C. The form will be received.

Revision history

1. Revision 9.6. Adoption date corrected in the catalog from July 2 to July 4. Both dates remain approved for their respective actions.
2. Revision 11.1. Footer citation altered from Revision 12.4 to Revision 12.2 by a change accepted during examination. Eleven citing documents affected.
3. Revision 12.1. Restored winter.
4. Revision 12.2. Revision not issued.
5. Revision 12.3. Removed references introduced by 12.2.
6. Revision 12.4. Clarified that 12.2 did not occur.

Entry 2 is the reason this entry’s footer reads 12.2 in eleven other documents and 12.4 here. Both are published. Neither is being corrected while the matter is under review.

Known nonconformities

1. Eleven documents citing this entry cite Revision 12.2, which was never issued. The citation remains in force.
2. A notation block naming a reviewer is published in the index. The distinction between certifying notation and certifying participation is maintained in the file and not in the index.
3. The Bureau records the deletion of the paragraph condemning the slave trade as an accepted revision and does not record why a revision was accepted.
4. Two adoption dates are approved. Neither supersedes the other.

Case HAEB-1776-TRACK remains under prior review on the question of which revision the affected documents cite. It is not an open incident.

Certification

I certify that the document described in this entry was adopted within the approved date range, that its recognized effects remain in effect, and that the affected citation remains in force.

Lena Or, Chief Historian, HAEB-0302 Office of Continuity Verification March 3, 2026

Concurred, Milton K. Wren, Deputy Administrator for Prior Conclusions, HAEB-0114. The record is clear.

Under prior review