Jefferson's biographers have indulged in a great many discussions about the reasons which determined the selection of the committee. Jefferson certainly did not seek the honor, and little did he dream at the time that it would bring him such fame. Without renewing the old controversy on the participation of the other members of the committee in the drawing up of the famous document, a few facts have to be considered. First of all it was not an improvisation. The committee appointed on June 10 reported only on June 28. A written draft was submitted to Adams and Franklin, whose advice could not be neglected, and they suggested several modifications, additions and corrections. Furthermore, Jefferson was too good a harmonizer not to discuss many points with his colleagues of the committee, so as to ascertain their views before writing down the first draft. Even the desirability of having a declaration was a highly controversial question, and Jefferson himself, in the detailed notes he took of the preliminary discussion, indicates that when the committee was appointed "the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the parent stem."[46]
On June 28, the committee appointed to prepare a declaration brought in a draft which was read and "Ordered to lie on the table." On July 2, Congress resumed the consideration of the resolution agreed to by and reported from the committee of the whole; and the same being read, was agreed to as follows.
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and, of right, ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connexion between them, and the state of Great Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
Properly speaking this is, as Mr. Becker has remarked, the real Declaration of Independence. But the principle once adopted, it remained to proclaim and explain the action taken by Congress not only to the people of the Free and Independent States, but to the world at large. Congress then resolved itself into a committee of the whole, only to decide that it was too late in the day to take up such a momentous question. The discussion continued on the next day but Harrison reported that the committee, not having finished, desired leave to sit again. On July 4, Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole to take into further consideration the Declaration; and after some time, the president resumed the chair. "Mr. (Benjamin) Harrison reported, that the committee of the whole Congress have agreed to a Declaration, which he delivered in. The Declaration being again read, was agreed to." Congress then ordered that the Declaration be authenticated and printed, and the committee appointed to prepare the Declaration "to superintend and correct the press."
Such is briefly told from the "Journals of Congress" the story of the momentous document in its external details. It has been too well related by Mr. Becker and Mr. Fitzpatrick to leave any excuse for a new account. Writing many years later, John Adams declared "there is not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress two years before," and replying to Adams' insinuations, Jefferson admitted that:
Pickering's observations, and Mr. Adams' in addition, that it contained no new ideas, that it is a commonplace compilation, its sentiments hacknied in Congress for two years before ... may be all true. Of that I am not judge. Richard H. Lee charged it as copied from Locke's treatise on Government ... I only know that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it. I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether and to offer no sentiment which had never been expressed before.
In another letter to Lee, written in 1825, a year before his death, Jefferson had given, as his last and final statement on the subject: