Season 3, Episode 11 | Not Just Jefferson: How Congress's Red Pen Helped Create the Declaration We Know

About this episode

This episode explores how Congress influenced the final version of the Declaration of Independence, moving beyond Thomas Jefferson's original draft.

Who really wrote the Declaration of Independence? Was it Thomas Jefferson’s carefully crafted vision, or the outcome of an intense, compromise-driven process inside Congress? In this episode of This Constitution, host Savannah Eccles Johnston is joined by Matthew Brogdon to examine how Congress transformed Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence into the document the world would come to know. The conversation traces the Declaration’s path from the Committee of Fiv...

People in this episode

Host: Savannah Eccles Johnston

Guest: Matthew Brogdon

Topics covered

• Declaration of Independence
• Thomas Jefferson
• Congress
• historical process
• compromise
• American history

Keywords

• Declaration of Independence
• Thomas Jefferson
• Congress
• historical process
• American history
• Committee of Five
• compromise

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Committee of Five

Books & works: Declaration of Independence

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