[Gavel banging] Narrator: On June 7th, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced resolutions in Congress declaring that "these United Colonies are & of right "ought to be free & independent States absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown."

♪ Meanwhile, a letter to a Pennsylvania newspaper signed only "Republicus" declared that it was time for independent Americans "to call themselves by some name"-- and proposed the "United States of America."

♪ A 5-man committee was named to produce a document setting forth the reasons for making such a momentous decision.

33-year-old Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was assigned to write the first draft.

♪ He would draw from Aristotle, Cicero, John Locke, and the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by his friend George Mason.

But his goal, he said, was to distill what he called "an expression of the American mind."

♪ He worked in a rented room on Market Street, fueled by cups of tea brought to him by his 14-year-old valet Robert Hemings-- the son of an enslaved servant, Elizabeth Hemings, and Jefferson's father-in-law.

Voice: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

♪ We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Thomas Jefferson] Wood: Everything that we believe in comes out of the Revolution.

Our ideas of liberty, equality, it's the defining event of our history.

"All men are created equal."

That is the most famous and important phrase in our history.

If we don't celebrate it, we have no reason to be a people.

And Lincoln knew that.

And that's why he says, "All honor to Jefferson."