Maier explains there are nearly no contemporaneous records from the Congressional committee appointed to draft the Declaration. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams provided conflicting accounts of the committee’s drafting process decades later, which means that Maier must compare the two men’s stories and check their accuracy against evidence from the 1770s; like a detective, Maier gathers clues with which she can build a fact-based narrative about the Declaration’s drafting, while she’s aware that some clues are misleading, and other clues have yet to surface.

The Declaration of Independence was created in a series of drafts and edits by many individuals. The process began with the drafting committee, in which Adams and Jefferson were the dominant figures. The other committee members were Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and Benjamin Franklin, and they all had a hand in composing the draft submitted to Congress. The final draft was the result of Congress’s collaborative editing of the document. Thomas Jefferson’s contribution to the process is central to this story because he wrote most of the draft; however, the document’s evolution shows that it was the result of adaptation and collaboration, and that Jefferson wasn’t the only person involved in its creation.