The Signers' Table

In June 1776 the Continental Congress handed the drafting of a declaration to a committee of five, and the committee handed it to its youngest member. Thomas Jefferson, thirty-three years old, wrote it in about two weeks in rented rooms on Market Street. Then, over 2, 3 and 4 July, the full Congress went through it line by line in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House, cutting roughly a quarter of the text before adopting it on the evening of 4 July. Most signatures were added on 2 August.

Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper between 1495 and 1498 on the end wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, where it remains. Its subject is a sentence: Christ has just said that one of the twelve will betray him. The perspective lines of the room converge on his head, the window behind him serves for a halo, and the apostles break into four agitated groups of three.

Here the room is a plain paneled chamber in Philadelphia green, three tall sash windows and the brick of the city beyond. Jefferson sits at the center against the middle window, red-haired and very still, both hands on the draft. To his right Franklin leans in over his spectacles while a man in a red coat presses a point; to his left the delegates read, confer and object in knots of their own. One candle burns among the pewter tankards. The eye lands on the paper, the only bright thing on the table.

The words were his. The argument belonged to everybody in the room, and the document that came out of it was stronger for both.