<P> Several early handwritten copies and drafts of the Declaration have also been preserved . Jefferson kept a four - page draft that late in life he called the "original Rough draught". It is not known how many drafts Jefferson wrote prior to this one, and how much of the text was contributed by other committee members . In 1947, Boyd discovered a fragment of an earlier draft in Jefferson's handwriting . Jefferson and Adams sent copies of the rough draft to friends, with slight variations . </P> <P> During the writing process, Jefferson showed the rough draft to Adams and Franklin, and perhaps to other members of the drafting committee, who made a few more changes . Franklin, for example, may have been responsible for changing Jefferson's original phrase "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" to "We hold these truths to be self - evident". Jefferson incorporated these changes into a copy that was submitted to Congress in the name of the committee . The copy that was submitted to Congress on June 28 has been lost and was perhaps destroyed in the printing process, or destroyed during the debates in accordance with Congress's secrecy rule . </P> <P> On April 21, 2017, it was announced that a second engrossed copy had been discovered in the archives at West Sussex County Council in Chichester, England . Named by its finders the "Sussex Declaration", it differs from the National Archives copy (which the finders refer to as the "Matlack Declaration") in that the signatures on it are not grouped by States . How it came to be in England is not yet known, but the finders believe that the randomness of the signatures points to an origin with signatory James Wilson, who had argued strongly that the Declaration was made not by the States but by the whole people . </P> <P> The Declaration was given little attention in the years immediately following the American Revolution, having served its original purpose in announcing the independence of the United States . Early celebrations of Independence Day largely ignored the Declaration, as did early histories of the Revolution . The act of declaring independence was considered important, whereas the text announcing that act attracted little attention . The Declaration was rarely mentioned during the debates about the United States Constitution, and its language was not incorporated into that document . George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights was more influential, and its language was echoed in state constitutions and state bills of rights more often than Jefferson's words . "In none of these documents", wrote Pauline Maier, "is there any evidence whatsoever that the Declaration of Independence lived in men's minds as a classic statement of American political principles ." </P>

How many people lived in the american colonies when the declaration of independence was signed