The text of the Declaration as Jefferson originally wrote it will be found in Randall's _Jefferson_, p. 172; Niles's _Weekly Register_, July 3, 1813; Timothy Pickering's _Review of the Cunningham Correspondence_ (1824), the _Madison Papers_. These copies do not always agree, since different drafts were followed. It is given, with changes indicated as made by Congress, in Jefferson's _Works_, i.; Russell's _Life and Times of Fox_; Lee's _R. H. Lee_. John Adams (_Works_, ii. 511) gives the reasons why Jefferson was put at the head of the committee for drafting the Declaration (_Potter's American Monthly_, vii. 191).
Trumbull's well-known picture of the committee presenting the Declaration in Congress was made known through A. B. Durand's engraving in 1820. The medals commemorating the event are described in Baker's _Medallic Portraits of Washington_, p. 32. The house in Philadelphia in which Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence is shown in Scharf and Westcott's _Philadelphia_ (i. 320); Watson's _Annals of Philadelphia_ (iii.); Brotherhead's _Signers_ (1861, p. 110); _Potter's American Monthly_, vi. 341; Gay's _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. 483; Higginson's _Larger Hist. U. S._, 274. The desk on which he wrote it was for a long time in the possession of Mr. Joseph Coolidge of Boston, and at his death passed by his will to the custody of Congress. Randall's _Jefferson_, i. 177; _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, iii. 151.]
The resolutions of independency of June 7th, introduced by R. H. Lee, in accordance with instructions from Virginia,[703] are not preserved either in the MS. or printed journals, and John Adams tells us (_Works_, iii. 45) much was purposely kept out of the records; but they have been found in the secretary's files, and are given in fac-simile in Force (4th ser., vi. p. 1700). Of the proceedings and debates which followed we have, beside the printed journals (i. 365, 392), three manuscript journals.[704] For details we must go to the memoranda made by Jefferson from notes taken near the time.[705] There seems no doubt that John Adams was the leading advocate of the Declaration[706] and such traces as are found of other speakers are noted in Bancroft, orig. ed., viii. 349; Wells's _Sam. Adams_, ii. 413, 433; Randall's _Jefferson_, i. 182. Bancroft draws John Adams's character with some vigor (viii. 309). Dickinson made the main speech against Adams. Bancroft abridges it from Dickinson's own report (viii. 452); Ramsay (i. 339) sketched it. (Cf. Niles's _Principles_, 1876, p. 400, and _John Adams's Works_, iii. 54.) Adams thought Dickinson's printed speech very different from the one delivered. Galloway, in his _Examination_ before Parliament, gave only the flying rumors of what passed. The later writers summarize the debates and proceedings.[707]