The official declaration of American independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 was the end point of a long political and military confrontation with the British motherland (American Revolution). It was only in the spring of 1776, almost a year after the beginning of hostilities, that a broad discussion began, stimulated above all by Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, to contemplate political separation. However, the representatives of the individual North American c…