Writing the Declaration of Independence

A colorful, enlightening account of how Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and the road to July 4: a selection from Joseph J. Ellis’s American Sphinx , winner of the National Book Award. How did the newest and youngest member of Virginia’s delegation to the Constitutional Congress come to write the founding document of the American project? In “Writing the Declaration of Independence,” Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis outlines the life of the document and the