Congress gave five men the job of explaining to the world why thirteen colonies were breaking away from Britain. They handed the writing to the youngest, a thirty-three-year-old Virginian named Thomas Jefferson, who rented two rooms from a bricklayer and wrote on a portable desk he had designed himself. Then Benjamin Franklin and John Adams picked up their pens. Franklin is said to have changed 'sacred and undeniable' to 'self-evident'. The words are imagined.