Here is the thing. Independence did not begin with a vote. It did not begin with Jefferson’s pen scratching across parchment. It began earlier, colder, louder, and far less polite.In the winter of 1776, Americans were not celebrating. They were arguing. In taverns where the ale was thin. In churches where the sermons bled into politics. In parlors where fear sat quietly beside the fire. Blood had already been spilled. Boston was occupied. Trade was strangled. And yet most Americans still clung to the King, not out of loyalty, but out of habit. Monarchy was flawed, but it was familiar.Then Common Sense arrived. Not as a book to be studied in silence, but as noise. Read aloud. Debated. Challenged. Answered. It did not give Americans facts they did not know. It gave them permission to ask questions they had avoided. Dangerous questions. Impolite ones. Questions that refused to stay inside the relationship.What follows is not the story of sudden revolution. It is the story of exhaustion. Of anxiety hardening into accusation. Of fear slowly learning the language of law. The Declaration of Independence did not create independence. It recorded it.This is the story of how winter arguments became summer law.