This online exhibition contains Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration, with emendations by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Also includes a fragment of an early draft of the document, a letter to Roger Weightman with Jefferson's reflections on the Declaration, Jefferson's draft of the Virginia Constitution, and an excerpt from Henry Home, Lord Kames' Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion regarding the pursuit of happiness.

This online exhibition offers insights into how the nation’s founding documents were forged and the role that imagination and vision played in the unprecedented creative act of forming a self–governing country. The exhibition includes a section on creating the Declaration of Independence.

This exhibition includes a timeline of events related to the Declaration and a detailed essay on the drafting of the documents. Also contains images of the Dunlap Broadside and a number of prints portraying the debating and signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This exhibition focuses on the extraordinary legacy of Thomas Jefferson--founding father, farmer, architect, inventor, slaveholder, book collector, scholar, diplomat, and the third president of the United States. The exhibition contains a section on the Declaration of Independence that includes original manuscripts and prints.

Pictorial materials are found in many units of the Library of Congress. The Prints & Photographs Division, alone, holds more than 15 million items, including photographs, prints, drawings and architectural and engineering designs; more than 1 million of the items are available in digital form.

This lesson focuses on a few key concepts of the Declaration of Independence, beginning with the phrase "All men are created equal." Students gain an appreciation of Thomas Jefferson's efforts to deal with the complex issues of equality and slavery in the Declaration of Independence.

This lesson focuses on the drafting of the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776 in Philadelphia. Students will analyze an unidentified historical document and draw conclusions about what this document was for, who created it, and why. After the document is identified as Thomas Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence, students will compare its text to that of the final document adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776 and discuss the significance of differences in wording.

The Provincial Congress of North Carolina authorized its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence.

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing the colonies’ separation from Great Britain.

In this segment of From the Vaults, we discuss a landmark document in American history, John Dunlap's printing of the Declaration of Independence on the night of July 4, 1776. On the morning of July 5, printed copies of the Declaration were dispatched by members of Congress to various assemblies as well as to the commanders of Continental troops. We also discuss the formation of this foundational document, and how it arrived at the Library of Congress.

Danielle Allen drew from her own experience teaching the Declaration of Independence as well as from historical sources in writing her book, "Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality." She makes the case that the Declaration of Independence was intended to ensure equality as much as it was intended to secure freedom.