Investigating Independence

Jefferson wrote this. Congress deleted it. See what else they cut from the Declaration of Independence, and why.

A hand-drawn quill pen writing on a scroll of parchment
cut by Congress red, struck throughadded by Congress gold, bold
Teacher guide: a 20-minute lesson

Learning goal

Students explain, out loud or on an exit ticket, how one revision changes the Declaration's argument, using words from the text as evidence.

Sequence

  1. 3 minutes. Introduce the two versions and the question: how did Congress change the argument, and whom did those changes serve?
  2. 5 minutes. Project "Teach it". Pick one passage, read the draft aloud and ask the question on screen.
  3. 5 minutes. Pairs talk it over, then a few share. Reveal what Congress did.
  4. 5 minutes. Class discusses the historical explanation and what it cannot tell us.
  5. 2 minutes. Exit ticket.

Exit ticket

Choose one edit Congress made. Quote the words, explain how the edit changes the argument, and name one thing the evidence does not tell us.

Before you teach it

  • The slave trade passage condemns the trade and blames the king. It does not propose ending slavery or freeing anyone, and it also blames the king for encouraging enslaved people to fight the colonists. Have students read both halves. Treat it as analysis, not as a keep-or-cut game.
  • "Merciless Indian savages" is the authors' hostile description of Native peoples. It stayed in the final text and is shown here because it is in the source. A question to ask: how does this description shape who appears entitled to liberty and who appears as a threat?
  • Matching Congress is not the right answer. Look for a defensible explanation supported by the text.
  • This runs from your screen. Students do not need devices and nothing is typed or collected.

With more time

A full period: do all three passages, about 12 minutes each, then the exit ticket.

A second day: use "You be Congress". The class votes on what to cut from the whole draft, then compares its choices with Congress's.

About this text

The story. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration, with revisions by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and the rest of the Committee of Five. The committee handed its draft to Congress on June 28, 1776. After voting for independence on July 2, Congress debated and revised the text, and adopted it on July 4. This is the comparison Jefferson himself recorded: what Congress struck out and what it put in.

Where it comes from. The draft and the changes follow the comparison Jefferson wrote out in his Autobiography (1821), where he marked what Congress struck out and what it inserted. Spelling, capitalization and punctuation are standardized for easier reading.

It is not the parchment, word for word. Jefferson's record differs in small ways from the signed parchment copy. The parchment says "unalienable" where Jefferson wrote "inalienable", and has a few other one-word differences, such as "swarms of Officers" and "repeated injury". The parchment is also headed "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America", not the title shown here.

How the numbers are counted. The counts come from the markings in this text. A cut and the words that replaced it count as one change. Other sources group the edits differently; the Library of Congress counts 39 changes by Congress.

Sources. Jefferson's Autobiography, as transcribed by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School. For the signed parchment, see the National Archives transcription.