Physical history of the United States Declaration of Independence Physical history of the United States Declaration of Independence The United States Declaration of Independence, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were no longer a part of the British Empire, exists in a number of drafts, handwritten copies, and published broadsides. The earliest known draft of the Declaration of Independence is a fragment known as the "Composition Draft." The draft, written in July 1776, is in the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration. It was discovered in 1947 by historian Julian P. Boyd in the Jefferson papers at the Library
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence editor of the "Raleigh Register" in an introduction to the article, "that the citizens of Mecklenburg County, in this State made a Declaration of Independence more than a year before Congress made theirs." According to Dr. Alexander, his father, John McKnitt Alexander, had been the clerk at a meeting convened in Charlotte on May 19, 1775. Each militia company in Mecklenburg County had sent two delegates to the meeting, where measures were to be discussed regarding the ongoing dispute between the British Empire and the American colonies. Relations between the colonies and the mother country had reached a crisis in