New Library of Congress exhibit features rare draft of Declaration of Independence
A rare draft of the Declaration of Independence, now on display at the Library of Congress, was written by Thomas Jefferson and contains edits from fellow Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin and John Adams.
Updated on: July 11, 2026 / 10:30 PM EDT / CBS News
Washington — They are words etched into America's conscience: "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Visitors to the Library of Congress can rediscover those foundational principles in a rare, original draft of the Declaration of Independence written by President Thomas Jefferson. It's on display in a new exhibit titled "The Declaration's Promise" that debuted this month for America's semiquincentennial and will continue through July 2027.
"This is Jefferson's fully-realized draft," Ryan Reft, lead curator for the exhibit, told CBS News. "You can see them changing words throughout and kind of distilling the initial draft into the draft that we know today."
The document contains edits from fellow Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, like using the word "citizens" instead of "subjects." "They were breaking from a monarchy and they were breaking from the idea of kinship through ethnicity, creating a country based on this critical idea established in the Declaration that was new and that we were not subject to anyone," Reft explained. "We were subject to each other. We were citizens."
And there were other changes, according to historian Kevin Butterfield, acting chief of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress.