Opinion: Why I’m walking 250 miles for America’s semiquincentennial

On Jan. 2, 1776, an officer in the Revolutionary army, Stephen Moylan, writing to a fellow officer, Joseph Reed, first invoked the term “United States of America.” He was anticipating what the war would make a reality: that a series of colonies established by the British Empire would accomplish two history-making marvels. This recently organized citizen’s army of patriots would actually win their independence from the greatest empire of the 18th century.