A dark blue silhouette of Jefferson's profile over which a quill pen angles down from left to right and the words Declaration Book Club are written.

Declaration Book Club

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, which created the United States.  To celebrate the Declaration's upcoming 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, Monticello is launching Declaration Book Club, featuring short readings, lively videos, and probing questions to spark discussion of our past, present, and future as one people, created equal. What did Jefferson and his cosigners declare in 1776--and how do you pursue life, liberty, and happiness today?

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Series Overview

Invitation from Ken Burns

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, which created the United States.  To celebrate the Declaration's upcoming 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, Monticello is launching Declaration Book Club, featuring short readings, lively videos, and probing questions to spark discussion of our past, present, and future as one people, created equal. What did Jefferson and his cosigners declare in 1776—and how do you pursue life, liberty, and happiness today?

"Back in 1776, the poetic language of the Declaration of Independence planted our national family tree, boldly imagining a nation in which 'all men' had been 'created equal.' But who, exactly, was 'a man?' And what could all men—and women—do with their equal creation? Those questions have animated American public life ever since. A quarter millennium later, Monticello’s Declaration Book Club helps us recover our roots and trace their tangled branches. In the process, it reminds us of the highest aspiration of our founding: that all Americans, regardless of who they are, what they believe, or where they come from, can reach for the fruits of that seedling’s promise—“'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'”

-- Henry Louis Gates, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, is the host and executive producer of the award-winning genealogy and genetics series Finding Your Roots

Meeting 1: 1776

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Declaration of Independence, Second Continental Congress, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dr. Jane Kamensky, President and CEO of Monticello

Welcome to Monticello's Declaration Book Club

RESOURCE LIST

Guiding Questions 
Timeline: Making and Sharing the Declaration of Independence
Reading Resources

  • “Jefferson, Adams, and the Crucible of the Revolution,” Dr. Jane Kamensky
    Written for the National Constitution Center’s Interactive Declaration, which launches on September 17, 2025
  • The Rough and Final Drafts of the Declaration of Independence
  • The Declaration of Independence
  • Excerpts from Our Declaration, Dr. Danielle Allen
  • “Robert Hemmings’s Declaration of Independence: The Power of a Rediscovered Signature,” Dr. Andrew Davenport

Supplementary Materials

Readings of the Declaration by veteran first-person Thomas Jefferson interpreter Bill Barker

Meeting 2: 1826

“ . . . all eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. . .”
Thomas Jefferson to Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826, Monticello, Virginia, United States of America
Dr. Andrew Davenport, Vice President for Research and Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies

Monticello’s Declaration Book Club – 1826

RESOURCE LIST

Introduction: “I shall not die without hope,” Dr. Andrew Davenport
Guiding Questions 
Timeline: The Declaration Reaches Middle Age 
Reading Resources

  • “Declaration of Independence Printings and Engravings,” Susan Stein
  • Remembering and Commemorating the Declaration – Letters to and from Thomas Jefferson
  • Video - “The 1823 Stone Engraving” Brandon Dillard (4 min)
  • The Last Letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams
  • “Mourning at Monticello,” Dr. Andrew Davenport

After Thomas Jefferson’s Death

  • Thomas Jefferson’s Tombstone
  • “Executor’s Sale” Advertisement
  • “Adams and Jefferson,” Daniel Webster, August 2, 1826

Meeting 3: Legacies

“ I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'”
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Auriana Woods, Director of Monticello's Getting Word African American History Department

Monticello’s Declaration Book Club – Legacies

RESOURCE LIST

Introduction: “What Makes Us American,” Auriana Woods
Guiding Questions
Timeline: The Declaration Around the World
Reading Resources

  • The Declaration of Sentiments, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1848
  • The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro [Commonly referred to as “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”]: Excerpts from a speech at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass
  • Abraham Lincoln to Henry L. Pierce and others, April 6, 1859
  • Remarks of President Gerald R. Ford, Independence Hall, July 4, 1976
  • Video: “The Legacy of the Declaration of Independence,” Brandon Dillard (4 min)

Declaration Exclusives

Check Out Our Exclusive Declaration Collection

 

 

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Monticello’s Declaration Book Club is a civic engagement initiative sponsored by and in collaboration with More Perfect.