<Li> Roger Sherman, representative of Connecticut, the only person to sign all four of the US state papers: the Continental Association, the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution </Li> <Li> Robert Livingston, representative of New York, who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase as the Minister to France </Li> <P> The delegates of the United Colonies in Congress resolved to postpone until Monday, July 1, the final consideration of whether or not to declare the several sovereign independencies of the United Colonies, which had been proposed by the North Carolina resolutions of April 12 and the Virginia resolutions of May 15 . The proposal, known as the Lee Resolution, was moved in Congress on June 7 by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia . During these allotted three weeks Congress agreed to appoint a committee to draft a broadside statement to proclaim to the world the reasons for taking America out of the British Empire, if the Congress were to declare the said sovereign independencies . The actual declaration of "American Independence" is precisely the text comprising the final paragraph of the published broadside of July 4 . The broadside's final paragraph repeated the text of the Lee Resolution as adopted by the declaratory resolve voted on July 2 . </P> <P> On June 11, the Committee of Five was appointed: John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Livingston of New York, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia . Because the committee left no minutes, there is some uncertainty about how the drafting process proceeded--accounts written many years later by Jefferson and Adams, although frequently cited, are contradictory and not entirely reliable . </P>

Who led the committee that drafted the declaration of independence