Are there any original drafts or notes that were used during the writing of the Declaration of Independence? Seems there MUST have been at least a 1st Draft and Final Draft or other writings or meeting notes about it? Something. Has something like that ever been found?
Yes!
I am aware of at least facet of the rough draft. Ben Franklin apparently changed “unalienable rights” of life, liberty, and happiness to “inalienable”.
ETA: I also recall that, among the list of grievances against the king, a reference to promoting the slave trade was excised.
If by draft you mean markups then here you go.
“We the People of the States of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode-Island…” etc. is really clunky and smacks of a 11th grade term paper.
Blockquote
Very cool. Thanks!
The Declaration was actually drafted by a “committee of five”, so there was plenty of back and forth to be found regarding the words that were used.
Ben Franklin, the original nitpicking pedant.
As @Moriarty noted, the document was drafted by multiple people. There was a “Committee of Five” responsible for drafting but the “Committee of the Whole” (essentially, the entire assembly of the Second Continental Congress) reviewed and revised. Since this is obviously in the pre-word processor era when “drafts” were handwritten copies, there were almost assuredly many different drafts circulating around with numerous edits and amendments, although general practice was to destroy intermediate drafts rather than to retain them as is the practice today.
Stranger
Ben Franklin would fit right in here.
Scrap paper would have had many uses. How many butts were wiped by draft copies of the Declaration?
I had heard (I think from the PBS documentary on Franklin) that his big contribution to that line was actually the phrase “self evident” to describe the truths (Jefferson had “sacred and undeniable”).
Which is indeed a fancy rhetorical trick. How can one question a truth that is self-evident? And it neatly absolves the writer of the need to prove the claims made. Win-win.