[jeffersondem]

“Sorry, pal, just because they said it, did not make it official.”

Well, it’s just the Declaration of Independence. It was written by a bunch of old, dead, white guys. Pay it no mind.

Sadly, your reaction is a reminder that many - maybe most - people today would not endorse the principles of the D of I. Or the U.S. Constitution for that matter.

In the view of many the Second Amendment is bad. Ninth amendment is bad. Tenth amendment is bad. Fifth amendment is bad. Electoral college is bad. Just because the founders wrote it, doesn’t make it official, “they say.”

[exit82]

You are painting with an awfully broad brush.

I said nothing about the D of I.

The D of I was written as a legal notification to the world of the justness of the cause for independence.

But for five long years, the promise of the D of I was just that—a promise—with no recognition by the world to back it up, with the exception of France, who had motives to fight the British.

Of course, the British Crown did not recognize the D of I in any way, and so committed troops and resources to quash the rebellion of its subjects.

This is why Franklin famously said “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will hang separately.”

They had committed treason against the Crown, and many of he signers paid a heavy price for their insolence to the King.

Until Britain was defeated before the world at Yorktown by Gen. Washington, with the help of the French, it was not willing to cede any territory to a bunch of rebels.

At the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Crown formally recognized America as its own nation, and dropped all claims to it.

Until that happened, America was just an idea.

After that America was a proper nation, in the eyes of the Crown and of the rest of the world.

While the War of 1812 had the same nationalities involved, this was not a fight of people who lived in the same space, but rather an invasion by country into another.

[x_plus_one]

It was not until after the revolution that land claims of the french citizens in the Illinois Country - St Genevieve, Fort De Chartres, Kaskaskia, St Anne could be legally adjudicated and made whole. The ownership documents were still in the french arpent system with ownership ultimately by the King of France. These land owner french speaking settlers were in this area since the late 1600's and the french and indian war settlement had left their land rights in limbo.

The congress of the new government of the USA had to individually reauthorize each plot of land so those citizens could keep the deeds to their own property in the new English based system of private land laws.

The declaration of independence was not a legal document and had no standing legally on the north american continent. It was the end of the war, the written constitution that made everything legal.