Season 3, Episode 9 | The Collaborative Origins of the Declaration: Unpacking Jefferson’s Role

Was Thomas Jefferson the sole author of the Declaration? In this episode of This Constitution, Matthew Brogdon sits down with Holly Megson, senior documentary editor on the Quill Project at Pembroke College, Oxford, to trace how the Declaration of Independence actually took shape inside the Second Continental Congress. Together, they move beyond the familiar image of Jefferson writing alone and uncover the collective effort that produced one of history’s most influential political texts.

Matthew and Holly explore the formation of the Committee of Five—Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston—and examine what little documentary evidence survives of their work. From Jefferson’s heavily marked “rough draft” to the conflicting memories Adams and Jefferson recorded decades later, the episode reveals how the Declaration emerged amid secrecy, overwhelming workloads, and deep uncertainty about whether independence would even be approved.

The conversation also asks a critical historical question: how should credit be assigned? While Jefferson clearly served as the Declaration’s primary draftsman, Holly explains why the document is best understood as a collaborative act of statesmanship, shaped by shared grievances, inherited political language, and editorial interventions from Adams, Franklin, and Congress itself.

This episode ultimately shows that America’s most iconic statement of independence was not the product of a single moment of inspiration; instead, it was the result of collective judgment under extraordinary pressure.

In This Episode

• (00:14) Meet Holly Megson and the Quill Project
• (01:13) Why the lone-author myth persists
• (01:25) The Committee of Five explained
• (02:23) Sources Jefferson consulted while drafting
• (03:17) How legislative committees actually write documents
• (04:24) What instructions Jefferson may have received
• (05:47) Earlier grievances and preexisting language
• (07:44) Why Sherman and Livingston fade from the record
• (08:52) Adams vs. Jefferson: conflicting memories
• (10:10) Jefferson’s response to Adams’s account
• (12:58) The crushing committee workload
• (14:33) Drafting under wartime pressure
• (16:25) Congress edits, Jefferson objects
• (17:38) Was Jefferson the author or the draftsman?
• (18:44) Why contemporaneous records matter

Notable Quotes

• (00:46) "Americans sort of walk around with an image in mind that Jefferson sat down in his boarding room and drafted the declaration, showed it to a few people, and then Congress adopted it. And there's a much more complex drafting process." — Matthew Brogdon
• (01:46) " There are no records, unsurprisingly, of when they met because of the nature of what they were discussing." — Holly Megson
• (07:02) "Jefferson, very helpfully after the Revolutionary War, decided that he wanted to mark [the Rough Draft] document... he doesn't attribute any of the changes to Livingston or Sherman." — Holly Megson
• (10:13) "The committee unanimously decided that he should write the draft, refuting the idea of any kind of subcommittee and really reinforcing that. It was a one-man endeavor,"— Holly Megson
• (17:53) " Jefferson is definitely the primary author, but if he were an academic, he'd be quite a bad academic. He hasn't properly cited his co-authors." — Holly Megson
• (17:39) "I don't necessarily dispute that he was the author. I do think the term draftsman is more appropriate." — Holly Megson
• (19:04) “I do think it is important, in summary, to say Jefferson plays the principal role. He is in many ways the draftsman author of the Declaration, but owes so much to the collaborative work that goes on in this committee.” — Matthew Brogdon