Existing comment:
"Foreign powers could not be expected to acknowledge us, till we had acknowledged ourselves... as an independent nation."
-- John Adams, 1776
* America was committed to fight a war for independence
* It could only win with help from France and Spain
* Neither nation would take sides in a British civil war; America had to be seen as a sovereign nation
* The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, an engraved invitation asking France and Spain to join America in the fight |