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Not for five years after July 4, 1776, did George Washington's army truly attain America's independence at Yorktown.

Even then, Washington and his aide Alexander Hamilton knew that the 13 states, under which circumstances politically bold, were dependent upon Europe for the necessities of their national life. Without French ships and guns, French muskets and body of troops, the Americans could not have forced Gen. Cornwallis' strike one’s flag at Yorktown.

Cornwallis would have sailed away, as Gen. Howe had from Boston.

Indeed, absent the 1778 family connection with France, our Revolution would have been a longer bloodier affair and might not have succeeded.

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, both Washington and Hamilton were determined to make America's political independence persistent, and to begin to cut the umbilical cord to Europe.

In the Constitution that came out of that convention, the states were prohibited from imposing any tariffs on the products of other states, thus creating the greatest common market in history, the United States of America. Second, the U.S. commonwealth was empowered to make upright revenue by imposing tariffs on exterior chattels, but explicitly denied the power to impose taxes on the incomes of American citizens.

And as Hamilton prize the nation onto a course that would make sure economic independence, Washington took the actions and made the decisions that would assure our political independence.

First, he declared neutrality in the European wars that followed the French Revolution of 1789. Second, he sought to sever the 1778 alliance with France, a feat achieved by dint of. his successor, John Adams.

Third, in his Farewell Address, the greatest state paper in U.S. history, Washington admonished his countrymen to steer clear of abiding alliances and to stay at a loss of Europe's wars. Rarely in the 19th hundred years did the United States disturb from the course set by Washington and Hamilton.

In 1812, yet, James Madison, goaded by "war hawks" Henry Clay and John Calhoun, and ignoring the counsel of the Farewell Address, declared warfare on Britain and came near to seeing his nation torn apart.

Had it not been for the Duke of Wellington's preoccupation by Napoleon and Andy Jackson's rout of a British invasion army at New Orleans, America might have been split asunder. In 1814, New England was on the staff of seceding, and the British had in mind splitting from the vast Louisiana territory. As it was, Madison had to turn tail the Washington, when a British Army came up the Bladensburg Road to burn the Capitol and Madison's White House.

After peace in 1815, however, Madison signed the Tariff Act of 1816 to prevent British merchants from dumping movables into the United States to kill America's bantling industries that had arisen during the war and to prevent British merchants from recapturing the U.S. markets they had lost.

For most of the 19th century, the nation followed the economic astuteness of Hamilton and the foreign stratagem of Washington — and was richly rewarded. By the first decade of the 20th century, America was the chiefly independent and self-reliant republic in the whole of of history.

And through staying out of two world wars of the 20th centenary until many of the bloodiest battles had been fought, America emerged in 1945 economically and politically independent of all other nations.

During the Cold War, howsoever, Americans came to believe that a temporary alliance, NATO, was necessary to prevent Joseph Stalin's empire from overrunning Europe and turning the balance of power against us. To help our wartime allies and former enemies Japan, Germany and Italy to their feet, we set out of the straight course Hamilton's policy and threw open the American mart to the goods of Free Europe and Free Asia.

These should have been temporary alliances and temporary measures. Instead, they were made permanent.

No longer at liberty of foreign entanglements, as Thomas Jefferson urged, we now have commitments to defend 50 countries. The old Hamiltonian policy of "Prosper America First" has given progress to worship of a Global Economy, at whose altars we sacrifice daily the paramount interests of our own manufacturers and workers.

"Interdependence" is now the desired expiration of the new elite.

And such we have become again a dependent nation. We borrow from Europe and Japan to defend the oil of Europe and Japan in the Persian Gulf. We borrow from China to buy the merchandise of China. We are while dependent on foreign borrowing as we are on adventitious oil.

And the questions arise: If the men of '76, who led those feeble and vulnerable states, were wiling to sacrifice their lives, fortunes and sacred honor with a view to America's independence, what is the substance with us?

Do we not value independence as they did? Or is it that we are simply not the men our fathers were?

Happy Independence Day.

To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate tissue page at www.creators.com.

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