The United States is preparing to commemorate her semiquincentennial on July 4.

For those challenged by history, this date will be 250 years since the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed. Fireworks will burst, speeches will be delivered, and messaging will tell Americans that the nation sprang fully formed from Philadelphia in the summer of 1776.

That account is tidy. It’s also historically incorrect.

The Declaration of Independence didn’t create the U.S. War did. And the republic that emerged from that war didn’t acquire durability until years later. By compressing the founding into a single moment, the semiquincentennial or America 250, because nobody can say semiquincentennial, misunderstands not only when the U.S. began, but how it survived.

The U.S. exists because 13 colonies won a prolonged, uncertain, and extraordinary revolution against the greatest power of the age. They then undertook the more difficult task of constructing a governing order.

The American Revolution began in 1775. It concluded diplomatically in 1783.........

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