First, July 4th 1776 was hardly our Independence Day. It was the day we presented the official document justifying and declaring the beginning of our struggle for Independence––but nothing was gained on that day save for the contempt of the British tyrant, George III.
Independence would not be actually gained until a bloody and protracted conflict with the British lead to their ultimate defeat at Yorktown in 1781. Even then, full and official Independence would not be gained until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September of 1783––over seven years after the signing of Jefferson's famous Declaration. There 13 separate articles of surrender were signed and given to 13 separate Sovereign Nations.
Only four short years later those 13 Independent nations signed on to yet another consolidation scheme Alexander Hamilton devised and presented at the Annapolis Convention of 1786.
It was there he cooked up the plan to end the Articles of Confederation and create an entirely new, consolidated government. His idea was to call delegates from the 13 sovereign nations, who, as colonies had banded together to defeat the British. They would be called together under the pretext of the alleged "need" to amend the Articles of Confederation so that these newly independent nations could better work together for their mutual benefit.
Hamilton's real plan was to create a consolidated government with a King who would have even more powers that the tyrant George III.
At that plenary convention, held in Philadelphia in 1787, Hamilton's scheme was proposed and eventually passed. Hamilton did not get all powerful king he wanted, but he did get enough of his plan to build on through the process of amendment and bad Supreme Court rulings. (Hamilton would eventually become the first Secretary of the Treasury and his protege, John Marshall, would be elevated to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. His rulings would consistently be in support of increased centralized power––but that is a story we cannot tell here.)
To make a long story short, the result was the creation of a new central government, to function under the definitions as outlined in its Constitution. Thus, the convention called to "amend the Articles..." became known as "The Constitutional Convention of 1787."
Once Hamilton's scheme was fully disclosed in Philadelphia many of the men who had risked their lives, their wealth, their property and their sacred honor fighting the centralized British state vigorously objected. Patrick Henry declared the plan, once adopted, would create a centralized government that would usurp the sovereignty of the ratifying states and take the wealth and freedom of the people, as he put it, "without due notice."
His protestations were not totally in vain. Henry's efforts garnered a Bill of Rights for the poor helpless citizens being unwittingly victimized by the English born, Alexander Hamilton (a tyrant and monarchist by nature). All Americans have Patrick Henry to thank for that.
The 13 ratifying committees were also given assurances that the new general government would be weak, and strictly limited to its delegated powers and no more. Virginia was given the assurance that if the compact, once signed on to, were to show itself to be harmful to Virginia interests that Virginia could opt out. Virginia was also assured it could declare judgements by the Federal Government it regarded as unconstitutional of no effect. Other states received similar assurances. Under those pretexts and assurances one Sovereign after another ratified the Constitution.
As we know from hindsight these assurances were never honored, and that should have been a dire warning to the Indians never to trust the American General Government, for it would not honor any contract proposed to them by "the Great White Father".
This new general government with its new Constitution went into effect in 1789, barely five years after the 13 Colonies received individual articles of surrender and were elevated to the status of Sovereign Nations.
Thus, it was only, historically speaking, a blink of time that Americans were truly free and sovereign. These sovereigns were only free of one form of tyranny for a little over five years before they sign on to another––another of their own making; a tyranny that would be infinitely more powerful, more devious, more power grabbing, more hegemonic and much more confiscatory than the one they had escaped.
It would not be unfitting to say what occurred in those five short years was tantamount to a man, having just escaped the clutches of a bear, running head on into a whole Pride of famished and glutenous Lions (Mr. Alexander Hamilton and company).
The rest, as they say, is history, one moment of which we incorrectly celebrate each July 4th. On that day we repeat to ourselves yet again the distorted and profoundly inaccurate albeit satisfying fairytale which we have been taught to substitute for the true historical facts and which we use to blind ourselves to unpleasant present realities.
The centralized monstrosity unconstitutionally ruling over us in Oligarchiopolis on the Potomac wouldn't have it any other way.