Committee of Five

John Trumbull's 1818 painting of the Committee of Five presenting their draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. From left to right: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin.
The Jefferson Memorial depicts the Committee of Five on a pediment sculpture by Adolph Alexander Weinman.

The Committee of Five of the Second Continental Congress was a group of five members who drafted and presented to the full Congress in Pennsylvania State House what would become the United States Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. This Declaration committee operated from June 11, 1776, until July 5, 1776, the day on which the Declaration was published.

The committee was composed of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman.