Washington — They are words etched into America’s conscience: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Visitors to the Library of Congress can rediscover those foundational principles in a rare, original draft of the Declaration of Independence written by President Thomas Jefferson. It’s on display in a new exhibit titled “The Declaration’s Promise” that debuted this month for America’s semiquincentennial and will continue through July 2027.
“This is Jefferson’s fully-realized draft,” Ryan Reft, lead curator for the exhibit, told CBS News. “You can see them changing words throughout and kind of distilling the initial draft into the draft that we know today.”
The document
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