In 1976 we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the formal birth of our country. In our protracted war for independence, the freedom loving people of the United States were engaged in a bitter struggle against the greatest world power of that time. The war was not over at the time of independence. But that declaration symbolized both the beginning of the end of colonialism in America and the coming into the world community of a new state, the United States of America. The British neither recognized our right to self-determination, nor the declaration of independence, nor did they voluntarily hand over power to us. We seized it because it was our inalienable right.