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

What if the Declaration of Independence wasn’t just Jefferson’s triumph, but John Adams’s victory too?

In this episode of This Constitution, Savannah Eccles Johnston and Matthew Brogdon make the case for giving John Adams his due. Often remembered as prickly, pompous, or perpetually overshadowed, Adams was in fact one of the most important and hardest-working architects of American independence.

Savannah and Matthew trace Adams’s rise from a New England farmer’s son to the fiercest and most relentless advocate for independence in the Continental Congress. Long before July 4, 1776, Adams was pushing Congress toward self-government, drafting foundational documents, organizing the war effort, and building the coalition that made independence possible.

The episode explores Adams’s deep commitment to the rule of law, his principled defense of the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, and his decisive role in nominating George Washington as commander in chief. It also reveals how Adams shaped the Declaration itself, not just as Jefferson’s editor, but as the strategist who insisted a Virginian write it, helped outline its structure, supplied key ideas and language, and then defended it on the floor of Congress as its fiercest champion.

Along the way, Savannah and Matthew unpack Adams’s political philosophy, especially his emphasis on consent, safety, and happiness as the true ends of government, and show how his thinking echoes throughout the Declaration and later American constitutional design.

The episode concludes with Adams’s enduring legacy, a founder who may never have been popular, but whose ambition, integrity, and relentless work helped create a nation and who deserves far more credit than history often gives him.

In This Episode

• [00:10 Introduction and justice for John Adams
• [01:20] Adams’s early life and background
• [03:14] Personality and public perception
• [07:17] Principles and the Boston Massacre defense
• [08:23] Role in the Continental Congress
• [09:21] Adams’s push for new governments
• [12:55] Lee’s resolution and Adams’s advocacy
• [15:48] Adams’s personality and coalition building
• [18:23] Formation of the Committee of Five
• [22:43] Adams’s self-awareness and Jefferson’s drafting
• [24:20] The drafting process and Adams’s influence
• [27:13] Adams as defender of the Declaration
• [28:10] Adams’s language and philosophy in the Declaration
• [32:59] Adams’s post-revolution contributions
• [34:27] Adams’s legacy and death
• [35:28] Adams in popular culture and the need for a monument
• [38:04] Conclusion and call for justice

Notable Quotes

• (00:21) “The theme of this episode is justice for John Adams.”— Savannah Eccles Johnston
• (11:07) “Adams pushed Congress in the fall of 1775. We're months, half a year from independence. And Adams is saying Congress should tell states to establish new governments based on the consent of their own people, exercising their own judgment with the idea that they would conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents and America in general.”— Matthew Brogdon
• (18:07) “It does take a person like John Adams who will just ignore the social cues, like ignore all of the social opprobrium attached to being caught making trouble, to actually induce everybody to move, get the job done right.”— Matthew Brogdon
• (23:00) “You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business.”— John Adams
• (27:50) “In many ways, yes, Jefferson wrote the Declaration, but it’s Adams’s Declaration too.”— Savannah Eccles Johnston
• (34:29)“John Adams deserves a lot more credit for the Declaration of Independence and for the American system of government in general.”— Savannah Eccles Johnston

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson originally wrote a fierce condemnation of slavery into the Declaration of Independence, only for Congress to remove it before signing the final document? And did you know that in 1776, no one was certain whether slavery in America would fade away, transform, or expand?

In this episode of This Constitution, Savannah Eccles Johnston and Dr. Nicholas Cole, Pembroke College, University of Oxford, explore the complicated world of slavery at the time the Declaration was written. Together, they walk through why Jefferson’s anti-slavery passage was removed, how Americans understood slavery in 1776, and why the institution stood on a very uncertain foundation during the revolutionary period.

Dr. Cole explains how the Atlantic world, English legal rulings, gradual emancipation proposals, and the widespread reading of Montesquieu shaped early American thinking. The conversation also explores the financial barriers to ending slavery, the moral and religious arguments circulating in the colonies, and the troubling realities within slaveholder families, including Jefferson’s own. They then discuss figures like George Washington and John Adams and how their attitudes toward slavery reveal a more complex political and moral landscape than many assume.

This episode shows how the Declaration of Independence emerged from a moment filled with unresolved questions, intense debate, and moral tension. It challenges the idea that the founders were blind to the contradictions of slavery and highlights how close the nation may have been to choosing a very different path.

In This Episode

• (00:00) Introduction and episode setup
• (01:17) Jefferson’s stricken slavery passage
• (01:28) Physicality and emphasis in Jefferson’s draft
• (04:29) Context and debates on slavery in 1776
• (06:00) Legal and social shifts against slavery
• (09:20) Gradual emancipation and economic obstacles
• (12:53) Humanity vs. property: enslaved persons as ‘men.’
• (14:29) Changing racial attitudes and moral regression
• (15:38) Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and family complexities
• (17:47) Christian and moral arguments against slavery
• (19:09) Philosophical and legal arguments on slavery
• (21:10) Montesquieu, republicanism, and slavery’s contradiction
• (22:08) George Washington, Adams, and founders’ approaches
• (25:13) Slavery and the founding compromises

Notable Quotes

• (06:01) “Montesquieu said you can't really have a republic and slavery, and that the arguments in favor of slavery are illegitimate.” - Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (11:08) “But I think there is this real problem that so much money has been loaned in order to allow people to own slaves. And so that makes ending it very difficult.” - Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (13:14) “Jefferson knew his property consisted of men. He understood the moral weight of that contradiction.” - Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (23:41) “Washington does things as a slave owner that we would find utterly abhorrent, including rotating slaves from his household when he's president and in a state that doesn't recognize slavery.” - Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (24:37) “Maybe it's better to speak more about Washington and certainly Adams and less about Jefferson as kind of core founding fathers. Hopefully, we're more Washingtonian and more like Adams, the American political project, than Jefferson.” - Savannah Eccles Johnston
• (25:20) “If anybody had tried to use the convention to settle the question of slavery, there would have been no union. That is absolutely clear."- Dr. Nicholas Cole
• (26:19) “1776 is murky on the question of slavery, and this actually helps us understand the moment and the document and what it represents and what it led to understand that everything was kind of up in the air.”- Savannah Eccles Johnston