President of the United States States which is not decided by popular vote. Nine vice presidents became president by virtue of a president's intra-term death or resignation. Donald Trump of New York is the 45th and current president. He assumed office on January 20, 2017. During the American Revolution in 1776, the Thirteen Colonies, acting through the Second Continental Congress, declared political independence from Great Britain. The new states were independent of each other as nation states and recognized the necessity of closely coordinating their efforts against the British. Congress desired to avoid anything that remotely resembled a monarchy and negotiated the Articles of Confederation
United States Declaration of Independence independence until after Congress had made its decision. Political maneuvering was setting the stage for an official declaration of independence even while a document was being written to explain the decision. On June 11, 1776, Congress appointed a "Committee of Five" to draft a declaration, consisting of John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. The committee took no minutes, so there is some uncertainty about how the drafting process proceeded; contradictory accounts were written many years later by Jefferson and Adams, too many years