Known for years. When you realize that at the Treaty of Paris Ben Franklin, amongst others, accepted a negotiation to allow high ranking British troops to stay in the U.S. to “help” structure the US governmental infrastructure you know, once again, it was not an outright win. Who let’s the enemy in the back door?

Then throw in the documented fact that Ben had some bit of loyalty to the king you begin to realize what he meant when asked, “…what do we have?” and he replied, “a Republic, if you can keep it.”

Add all that up and I guarantee you it does not equal freedom. We never really had it.