It’s been twelve score years.
It’s interesting how we consider our independence to have started at our declaration of it. We hadn’t yet won the Revolution. It actually seemed doubtful. Troops weren’t too happy and thought about quitting. Congress argued and didn’t want to pay. Only 15% of the population participated.
Even after the British limped home and said, “We didn’t want to win anyway,” we still had a Constitution to figure out. Paul Revere helped start the first insurance company, remember. We won the war, we even won the peace, but then we had to figure out how to govern.