IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

The first painting that Trumbull completed for the Rotunda shows the presentation of the Declaration of Independence in what is now called Independence Hall, Philadelphia. The painting features the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence — John Adams, Roger Sherman, Thomas Jefferson (presenting the document), and Benjamin Franklin — standing before John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress. The painting includes portraits of 42 of the 56 signers and 5 other patriots. The artist sketched the individuals and the room from life.

hen 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.

The Declaration is considered to be a preceding founding document of the later formed United States of America, where July 4 is celebrated as Independence Day. At the time the Declaration was issued, the American colonies were "united" in declaring their independence from Great Britain, but were not yet declaring themselves to be a single nation. That union would evolve and take shape during the next few years after the Declaration was issued.

Thomas Jefferson -- author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, third president of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia -- voiced the aspirations of a new America as no other individual of his era. As public official, historian, philosopher, and plantation owner, he served his country for over five decades. Born April 13, 1743, at Shadwell, Virginia; died July 4, 1826, Monticello

President Abraham Lincoln explained the importance of the Declaration to American history in his Gettysburg Address of 1863: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."