This Day in History: July 21

The draft shows the multiplicity of corrections, additions and deletions that were made at each step. Although most of the alterations are in Jefferson's handwriting (Jefferson later indicated which changes he believed were made by Adams and Franklin), he felt slighted by the way Congress rewrote the manuscript. In a consoling letter of July 21, 1776, the state's senior delegate, Richard Henry Lee, wrote to Jefferson that he wished that "the manuscript had not been mangled as it is."