A Leap In The Dark .
The Struggle to Create the American Republic .
Benjamin Franklin stood on a bobbing ship , bathed in a warm summer sun .
On this golden morning in June 1754 , he was sailing north on the blue-green Hudson River , past dusty little villages and seemingly endless grand estates , beyond the gently rolling wooded terrain just north of Manhattan and into the New York Highlands , where tall hills hovered above emerald meadows .
Franklin had retired as a printer and publisher , but this was not a pleasure cruise .
He was on a mission .
Pennsylvania had selected him as a representative to meet in Albany with commissioners from other British colonies .
They were to search for a means by which the provinces , and their Native American allies , could cooperate in the likely event that war erupted with France .
Franklin , who strained for a glimpse of Albany through the mottled summer haze , bore little resemblance to the plainly dressed , stout , avuncular , older man that we usually imagine from the numerous portraits and sculptures produced a quarter century or so later .
In 1754 Franklin , who was not yet fifty , was physically trim , with the thick neck and sinewy arms of a swimmer , for in fact he began most days with a lengthy swim ( the best workout , he thought , for maintaining one's physical fitness ) .
If he was dressed as normal , Franklin wore an expensive lace shirt , silver buckled shoes , and a wig with long brown curls , which lent an air of priggishness , if not unctuousness , to his appearance .
Suddenly , not far ahead , and on his left , Franklin spotted Albany .
This was his first trip to what , by American standards , was a very old town .
The French had established a settlement here more than 200 years before , then came the Dutch , and finally the English , who named the place Albany , or Albainn , the ancient name for the Scottish Highlands , to which this region bore a resemblance .
The English , like their predecessors , had erected a fort that served as a fur emporium , a venue for commerce with the Mohawk Indians , whose villages and verdant fields of corn dotted the landscape along this stretch of the Hudson Valley .
As Franklin's vessel drew near the surprisingly busy Albany pier , he glimpsed reminders that he was on the exposed frontier , far removed from the protective arm of a strong central government .
This town of 2,000 in habitants stood entirely enclosed within a wooden palisade , and on a steep hill on the far side of town , Franklin spotted the old fort , still formidable with high , thick , grey stone walls .
Franklin had come to Albany to prepare for war .
King George's War , Great Britain's third war with France since 1689 , had ended six years earlier without a clear victor , and most leaders in London , as well as the colonies , feared that hostilities would soon resume .
Once before , when the first Anglo-French war of the series , King William's War , had ended inconclusively , the fragile peace that followed lasted only four years .
Besides , a new source of tension was apparent .
Peace had hardly come in 1748 before Versailles sent a modest military detachment to what the English called the Ohio Country , a region bounded by the Mississippi River , the Great Lakes , the Ohio River , and the Appalachian Mountains .
France , like Great Britain , claimed this area .
It regarded the trans-Appalachian West to the Mississippi River — together with Canada — as part of New France , its colonial domain in North America .
When it dispatched its white clad soldiery to the Ohio Country , France had acted to woo the Indian inhabitants and select sites for the eventual construction of fortifications .
British officials , both in America and London , were immediately concerned .
With crystal clarity , they saw that if the French won control of the Ohio Country , the English would be hemmed in between the Atlantic and the Appalachians , caught between New France to the north and west , and Spanish Florida to the south .
Opportunities for colonists who aspired to own land would vanish , fortunes sunk in western land speculation would be lost , and the dream of a mighty and expansive British empire would die .
Robert Dinwiddie , the crown-appointed governor of Virginia , was the first American official to alert London to the danger .
It was logical that he would act swiftly .
Not only did Virginia claim the Ohio Country through grants made a century and a half earlier in its initial charters , but Dinwiddie was a stockholder in the Ohio Company , an enterprise that had been awarded title by the Crown to hundreds of thousands of acres in the disputed region .
It took little imagination for Dinwiddie to guess that the French soldiers had been sent to take control of the head of the Ohio River , Anglo-America's access route to the Ohio Country .
He wanted guidance from London about how to respond .
Before the year was out , he was advised to send a messenger to the French army in the Ohio Country informing them that the region belonged to Virginia .
He selected young George Washington for the mission .
Washington was just twenty-one years old and militarily inexperienced .
A few months before , he had been appointed Virginia's adjutant general for the southern portion of the province , but he had no military training and had never been in combat .
However , he was a rugged out doors type with a bit of polish to his behavior .
He also was ambitious , eager to carry the message , and backed by influential patrons who urged Dinwiddie to select him .
The son of a wealthy planter-businessman , Augustine Washington , young George should have had a promising future , but at age eleven he had lost his father to one of the virulent fevers that preyed on residents of the Chesapeake .
Thereafter , doors seemed to close in his face .
As a third son , George inherited little more from his father's estate than a small , spent farm .
Suddenly , the best he could hope for appeared to be a life as a middling planter .
With a bit of luck , he might someday be a man of consequence locally , but without great wealth and the power it could muster , and devoid of a formal education — the opportunity for extended schooling had vanished with his father's demise — Washington's prospects of ever being an important figure in Virginia were slim .
George was about twelve when he first saw Mount Vernon , the estate of his half-brother Lawrence .
Although not much more than a country farmhouse standing on jade green land high above the Potomac River , it — and Lawrence — opened a new world to him .
Lawrence not only had been educated in England prior to Augustine's death , but he had soldiered in the Caribbean and South America during King George's War .
When he returned to the Northern Neck of Virginia , the region between the Potomac and the Rappahannock Rivers , he had married into the Fairfax family , the most powerful clan in that part of Virginia , and soon was elected to the colonial assembly .
At Mount Vernon , and neighboring Belvoir , a stately Fairfax plantation , young George discovered a world of wealthy , powerful , urbane men and women .
He wanted to be like them .
Cosmopolitanism , he thought , would come from listening to their conversations , reading what they read , and modeling his behavior on what he observed .
Soon he was taking fencing and dancing lessons , and poring over guidebooks on etiquette and comportment .
But formidable obstacles lay in his path .
While he might acquire the trappings of urbanity , gaining wealth and power were more problematical .
Nevertheless , at about age sixteen he acquired the skills of a surveyor , a craft that paid well and offered those who dared an opportunity to speculate in frontier lands .
But he found soldiering even more alluring .
He noticed the deference that others extended to Lawrence and the esteem with which he was held for having risked his life for the common good .
George Washington wanted that respect as well , but mar tial adventures seemed unlikely until he learned that Dinwiddie was searching for an intrepid soul to carry his message to the French .
Washington knew that if he served as the governor's messenger , he would be in an excellent position to acquire an important post in any army that Virginia might create .
Washington hurried to Williamsburg to volunteer .
Seven months before Franklin's arrival in Albany , in November 1753 , Washington departed for the Ohio Country .
He was a sturdy young man in excellent physical condition .
Observers described him as about 6 ' 4 " in height , with broad shoulders , a narrow waist , and remarkable upper body strength .
Several mentioned his agility and grace , and some thought him the finest equestrian they had ever observed .
Furthermore , after five years of hacking his way through dense , mountainous forests and lugging heavy surveying instruments up and down Virginia's western hills , he exuded stamina and endurance and long since had evinced the mettle for coping with the hazards of the mountain wilderness .
Young Washington was accompanied by a party of six , all of whom were accustomed to physical labor and experienced in the vicissitudes of the wilderness .
Two were Indian traders , one a gunsmith , one had frequently carried messages for Governor Dinwiddie , and one was to serve as a translator .
The sixth was Christopher Gist , a tough frontiersman , whose job was to serve as a guide and get Washington home alive .
Washington's party set out from Virginia under a flawless blue sky on the final day of October .
As the men started their ascent into the barren mountains northwest of the Shenandoah Valley , entering western Maryland and eventually southern Pennsylvania , the lush days gave way to cold autumn rains .
The party moved relentlessly up steep wooded slopes and down into cheerless hollows half obscured by gloomy fog .
They observed no sign of human life , save for the trails they rode , carved through the wilderness by generations of Indians who now — menacingly — remained hidden .
When they reached the Monongahela River , about thirty miles below the Ohio , they spotted the log cabin of an English Indian trader .
Washington paused only long enough to learn what the trader knew of recent Indian activities in the region .
From there the men pressed on , traversing one brown ridgeline after another , until three weeks out from Alexandria , Virginia , they at last reached the Forks of the Ohio , the site of the confluence of the Monongahela , Allegheny , and Ohio Rivers at present-day Pittsburgh .
The men explored the Forks for a possible site upon which Virginia could someday erect a fort that would command the Ohio Country .
Washington paddled about in a canoe near the shoreline straining to see , and at times alighted to walk the terrain , until he found what he believed was the perfect spot that " Nature has contrived " for building the installation .
Soon the party was on the move again , traveling almost straight north , for the most part hugging the banks of the fast flowing Ohio River .
Now they rode full into a remorseless northern wind , often accompanied by snow , and in the evening , as the dark tightened around a landscape that was snowbound and silent , the men shivered in their tents .
At Logstown , a couple days above the Forks , Washington was greeted by Half King , an envoy sent by the Six Nations Confederacy , which included the Mohawk and Iroquois .
Dispatched to negotiate with the French , Half King repeated to Washington the truculent address he said that he had given earlier to the French commander in the Ohio Country : He accused the French of being " the Disturber in the Land , by coming & building your Towns , and taking it away unknown to us & by Force " .
To this , the French commander had rejoined that his nation possessed the Ohio Country and intended to repulse any English , or Indians , so brazen as to invade the region .
Washington , who was unauthorized to negotiate , listened in silence , promising only to relate to Virginia's governor what he had heard .
On November 30 , a month out from Alexandria , Washington began the final , most arduous leg of his journey .
Alternately traveling on foot and horseback in temperatures that seldom rose above freezing , the men climbed hills with old snow that barely remained white , slogged through thick , black bogs , and from time to time used hastily built log rafts to make their way through seemingly impenetrable swamps .
Finally , nearly 100 miles north of the Forks of the Ohio , and just south of lake Erie , their destination came into view : Fort Le Boeuf , a small rectangular French post that bristled with artillery and was garrisoned by nearly 100 French soldiers .
Changing from the buckskin and moccasins he had worn during his journey , Washington donned attire more suitable for a gentleman and royal messenger , and hurried to the fort amid swirling gusts of snow .
The French received him hospitably , and soon the young Virginian was dining with his hosts , enjoying perhaps his first good meal in six weeks , replete with excellent French wine .
Afterwards , Washington got down to business .
Preeningly tough , he presented Dinwiddie's message .
The French response was no less emphatic : France was not encroaching on British soil ; the Ohio Country belonged to France by the right of discovery and exploration .
Throughout , the French officers and Washington remained cordial , but all knew that what had been said meant that war was on the horizon .
Forty-eight hours later , Washington-rested , clad again in buckskin and furs , and carrying food and liquor provided by his generous hosts - departed under shifting grey clouds to return across the Appalachians in the dead of winter .
Washington barely survived the trip home .
First , he was fortunate to escape harm when a brave who had fallen in with him and Gist somewhere between the Allegheny and the Ohio - near what the English traders disquietingly called Murthering Town - tried to kill him .
The Indian , who was walking about fifteen paces ahead of the two Englishmen , abruptly wheeled about brandishing a single-shot handgun and fired .
His shot missed .
Thereafter , Washington and Gist disarmed the Indian and sent him on his way unharmed , or so Washington later claimed .
Later , Washington might have drowned , or died from hypothermia , when he fell from his raft into the swirling Allegheny River , whose temperature , he later said , was " extream severe " .
He was rescued by Gist , who got him ashore , built a fire , and tended his frostbitten extremities .
Thereafter , the journey was largely uneventful , and it was speedier than the outbound trek .
Making about ten miles a day under the paltry winter sun , Washington came down out of the mountains only three weeks after leaving Fort Le Boeuf .
A few days later he reached Williamsburg .
When Washington was received by Dinwiddie , he made his report : the French denied Virginia's claims to the Ohio Country .
The governor wasted no time asking the assembly to raise an army , which in turn acted rapidly to create the Virginia Regiment .
Washington was rewarded with the post of second in command , but soon was named commander of Virginia's army when his superior died in an accident .
Recruiting proceeded through the damp , chilly spring , and as Franklin and the other commissioners started their journeys to Albany , Lieutenant Colonel Washington , now all of twenty-two years old and wearing a blue and red uniform of his own design ( it was the exact reverse of the redcoat uniform worn by British regulars ) , marched his men toward the area in dispute .
His orders were to proceed to the forks of the Ohio River , where he was to build a fort .
If the French had already arrived , he was to drive them away .
Late in May 1754 , as Washington's ragged , ill-trained force of fewer than 150 men advanced through the tangled Pennsylvania forests to within forty miles of the forks of the Ohio , intelligence arrived that a party of French soldiers had been spotted .
Washington moved quickly to intercept them .
Indian guides led him , with about forty men , deeper into the dark wilderness .
After a few hours they found their prey .
There were thirty-five French soldiers .
Having only a slight numerical advantage , Washington decided on a surprise attack With stealth , he moved forward , until his men encircled the adversary .
At the right moment , Washington screamed the order to open fire .
A volley of shots poured down on the unsuspecting French .
Some were hit .
The others fought back , but the firefight was brief .
Caught off guard , and without adequate cover , the overpowered French surrendered .
Washington's Indian allies then went to work , and the young Virginian was unable , or unwilling , to stop them .
In all likelihood Washington , who never before had experienced combat , was " unmanned " , as the historian Fred Anderson has observed , possibly by the shocking carnage that he had just unleashed , including the realization that he had just killed , or mortally wounded , another man .
Momentarily disoriented , or perhaps in a rush of blood lust , Washington stood aside while the Indians massacred several of the French , together with their commander , Ensign Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville .
Ensign Jumonville was tomahawked and scalped , after which Half King , the leader of Washington's Indian allies , scooped out the Frenchman's still warm brain and squeezed it in his hands .
What Washington did not know before he ordered the attack was that Jumonville was on a peaceful mission , not unlike that which had taken him to Fort Le Boeuf six months earlier .
Long before Washington opened fire on the French in that thick American forest , imperial authorities in London had recognized the gathering war clouds .
Not only was trouble brewing in the Ohio Country , but evidence existed that France was considering an attempt to retake Nova Scotia , which it had lost to Great Britain forty years before .
In August 1753 , the Board of Trade directed all colonial governors to use force if necessary to resist French encroachments on their frontiers .
A month later , it instructed the governors of New York to call an intercolonial conference .
London had several things on its mind .
It wished to restore friendship with the Indians of the Six Nations Confederacy , an alliance of tribes that inhabited the vast area stretching from the Hudson Valley deep into the western regions of the Ohio Country .
It wanted the colonies to find a way to build a string of forts across the vulnerable frontier , and to act cooperatively in supplying the forces that were raised to deal with the French .
Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey of New York quickly invited eight colonies to send delegates to Albany - he chose that site because of its proximity to the Iroquois homeland in what now is upstate New York - to treat with the Indians and to seek ways in which the provinces might cooperate against the French .
Virginia , which had already been promised aid by London , declined , as did New Jersey , which was far from New France and had no land claims in the West .
However , the six other provinces - the New England colonies , as well as Maryland and Pennsylvania - joined New York in sending delegations of varying size .
Some of the twenty-five commissioners came quite eagerly , seeing the conference not merely as useful in the event of hostilities with France but as a golden opportunity to fulfill a long cherished dream .
They planned to seek a union of the colonies under British control .
Benjamin Franklin was one such delegate .
Though middle-aged , Franklin was new to politics .
Raised in Boston and trained as a printer , he had left in his late teenage years to make his way in the world .
He explored opportunities in New York and London , but finally settled in Philadelphia - the city , in his estimation , in which an industrious go-getter might have the best shot at success .
" All his surviving papers " , the historian Edmund S. Morgan has written , " testify to his lifelong wish to be useful to his friends , to his countrymen , and to mankind in general " .
His voluminous writings also unmistakably reveal a man of insatiable ambition who was incapable of realizing all his aspirations , for each new success only whet his appetite to achieve even more .
He began his dizzying arc of assent as a clerk in a print shop , earning a meager but
livable income .
Soon he was the foreman of the shop .
After three years , he and a partner purchased their own newspaper .
Twelve months later ,
Franklin bought out his business associate .
Sometime thereafter he opened a stationer's shop , which quickly flourished .
He now was earning money as a shopkeeper and the publisher of a newspaper , magazine , and almanac .
Within a short time , additional income rolled in from partnerships that he entered into with several former apprentice printers .
In addition , like many others with a discretionary income , Franklin speculated in real estate , some of it in the trans-Appalachian West .
Nineteen years after taking the clerking job in Philadelphia , and at a time when the most successful skilled craftsman could hardly hope to earn more than £ 30 a year , Franklin enjoyed an annual income in excess of £ 2,000 .
He had been inordinately successful , and not just in material terms .
He had become a leading figure in Philadelphia .
He not only impressed people with his assertive intelligence ; he was an activist who had been instrumental in creating a police force , firefighting units , a library , hospital , college , and a scientific society in his adopted hometown .
He had also acquired a reputation throughout the empire for his inventions which by this time included improved stoves , candles , and lamps , as well as the lightning rod - and scientific experiments .
By mid-century Franklin was the best-known person in the colonies .
Wishing for free time " during the rest of my Life for Philosophical Studies and Amusements ; ' Franklin retired .
He was forty-two years old .
He lived for another forty-two years and more .
He never resumed a business career , but three years after retiring he embarked on a new , endeavor .
He entered politics and was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1751 .
Franklin did not turn to politics merely to dabble now that he had time on his hands .
Terribly ambitious , he sought to scale new heights .
Moreover , he was a British nationalist who chafed at the prospect that France and Spain might dominate the region beyond the mountains and someday perhaps all of North America .
Nor was he disinterested .
Franklin owned land in the Ohio Country. just as he entered the assembly , Franklin published an essay entitled " Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind " , his most complete public statement concerning Anglo-American expansionism .
Should the British lose the American West , he cautioned , the inhabitants of the thirteen mainland colonies would in no time be " crowded together in a barren Country insufficient to support such great Numbers " .
They would be too poor to consume British manufactures and perhaps even incapable of feeding themselves .
The available land would be insufficient for all who wished to become property-owning yeomen .
Most Americans would be no better off than the multitudes who inhabited the mother country .
The only hope of avoiding the fate of those in the old country , he said , was to wrest control of trans-Appalachia from its rivals , then remove the Indians .
Franklin's object was to make the British Empire the world's largest and most powerful .
But he also hoped to make Philadelphia its American center , and " in another Century ... [ when ] the greatest Number of Englishmen will be on this Side of the Water " , to see that it was the capital of the Anglo-American empire .
And expansion beyond the mountains was but the first - or next - step that Franklin envisioned for the Anglo-American empire .
A " great empire , like a great cake , is most easily diminished at the edges " ; he warned , as he dilated about the necessity for London to spread , and strengthen , its jurisdiction over America's borderlands .
Franklin , who seemed to say that the moment had arrived for Quaker Pennsylvania to take on a character of unyielding , militant toughness required for imperial greatness , also appeared to be offering himself as the tenacious visionary who could transform the province's dreams of expansion into reality .
During King George's War , which ended three years before Franklin assumed public office , Pennsylvania's Quaker - dominated assembly had refused to enact a militia bill .
Franklin , a private citizen , had been instrumental in the movement to have his colony play a substantive role in the conflict .
His motto had been the " Way to secure Peace is to be prepared for War " .
He helped raise a volunteer military force , proposed a lottery that ultimately provided money for the purchase of arms from Massachusetts and the fortification of the Delaware River , and served as an envoy to New York to borrow cannon .
He also used his printing press to rally the population to take up arms , sometimes appealing to the anti-Catholic prejudices of many inhabitants to arouse fear and hatred of the French .
In the most lurid terms he described to Philadelphians what might occur if the city was sacked by a French army .
Wives , children , and aged parents would be its prey , businesses would be laid waste , homes would be plundered , and only too late would the city's inhabitants learn " what Misery and Confusion , what Desolation and Distress " had befallen them because they were unprepared for war .
Franklin additionally printed essays by others that warned of French and Spanish encirclement of the British colonies , denying future generations access to the bucolic farmland beyond the mountains .
He authored muscular tracts that advocated a steady push westward , arguing that the best means of conquering the vast frontier was through the succor and direction of a union of the colonies .
If " ignorant Savages " were capable of forming the Six Nations Confederacy .
Franklin added , surely the thirteen English colonies should be able to do the same .
The leaders responsible for creating such a union , he went on , " may be properly called Fathers of their Nation " .
Franklin preferred that the colonists take the lead in creating an American union , as he believed that the inhabitants of America would be more receptive to a plan that was hatched on their side of the Atlantic .
He also knew that it would be easier to correct any flaws in the scheme if it were a homegrown invention .
About three weeks before he left Philadelphia for Albany , Franklin published a story in his newspaper , the Pennsylvania Gazette , about the menacing French activities in the Ohio Country .
Accompanying the account was a drawing of a snake severed into several sections , each identified as a separate colony , and beneath the caption ; " JOIN , or DIE " .
The illustration soon appeared in several colonial newspapers .
Franklin's colleagues slowly drifted into Albany .
Considering the adversities that confronted all travelers in early America , it was hardly surprising that not a single commissioner had reached the village by June 14 , the date that De Lancey had set for the opening session .
Nor had the Iroquois arrived .
Finally , five days late , enough delegates were on hand to begin .
As all the delegates were committed to establishing good relations with the Iroquois Confederacy , their first important business was to prepare a cordial address to the Indians .
Chief Hendrick , speaking for the 150 tribesmen who by now were encamped in and about Albany , replied on July 2 .
He minced no words .
" Look at the French : ' he cried .
" They arc men .
They are fortifying everywhere .
But - we are ashamed to say it - you arc like women : ' Furthermore , he castigated the English for having ignored the Iroquois for too long .
He had a point .
Since Queen Anne's War at the beginning of the century , the English in New York , who steadfastly evinced an interest in landjobbing the Iroquois , had displayed little concern for their plight when they were threatened by the French and their Indian allies .
He punctuated his remarks by picking up a stick and throwing it behind him , after which he acrimoniously declared : " You have thus thrown us behind your back and disregarded us " .
The delegates were quick to mollify him .
They promised to stand by the Six Nations and gave their sachems so many gifts that thirty wagons were required to transport the booty .
Meanwhile , the British uncorked the rum pot and proceeded to fleece their inebriated new friends .
A representative of the Penn family - the proprietary family in Pennsylvania and commissioners from Connecticut negotiated separate land deals with the Iroquois .
The latter paid the Iroquois £ 2,000 in New York currency for 5,000,000 acres on the upper Susquehanna River , while Pennsylvania induced them to sign away their title to an even greater amount of land west of the Susquehanna for £ 400 " .
The delegates then turned to how they might further cope with the French threat .
De Lancet who had called the meeting , delivered what in effect was a keynote address in which he raised the issue of a mutual assistance pact between the colonies .
The delegates , knowing already that several in attendance had brought proposals for intercolonial cooperation , debated the matter only briefly before creating a committee to craft a " general plan " from among the " Schemes " that were introduced .
Several propositions were offered .
A representative of the proprietors of Pennsylvania urged the creation of an army , called the " Union regiment " , that was to consist of companies of 100 men from each colony .
It was to he financed by excise taxes and commanded by officers appointed by the Crown .
This scheme not only failed to address issues of governance , but it would have compelled colonial soldiers to serve under British regulars .
This plan went nowhere .
De Lancey , who was not well liked , then offered New York's plan .
Though the competition would have been stiff , he might have edged out all rivals for the title of the most unpopular royal official in America .
Virtually everyone who met De Iancey concluded that he looked with contempt on all whom he regarded as his inferiors , and that he judged almost everyone to be in that category .
If his supercilious manner was not bad enough , he also struck a considerable number of acquaintances as an ambitious , cunning , scheming backstabber .
De Lancev's plan would have compelled each colony to contribute to the establishment of forts and fleets on Lake Erie and Lake Ontario .
It required little perceptivity for these worldly men to see that the chief beneficiaries of Dc Lancey's scheme would be De Lancey himself , as his commercial dealings with the Iroquois would flourish through the protection provided by other colonies , and New York , whose defense expenditures henceforth would be borne in large measure by other colonies .
Nevertheless , there was a meritorious aspect of the plan .
If successful , it would have severed all links between French holdings in the Ohio Country and Canada , and thus might have pacified the New York frontier while simultaneously opening Anglo-America's access to the Ohio Valley .
Nevertheless , most delegates thought it self-serving and likely to hurt their interests as much as it helped New York's cause .
It was rejected out of hand .
Thomas Hutchinson , a Massachusetts representative , also put forward a plan .
Born in 1711 , just five years after Franklin , and only a couple of blocks away from the modest cottage in Boston's North End where young Benjamin was growing up , Hutchinson knew quite different surroundings .
The scion of a wealthy and influential family prominent for producing powerful merchants , shipbuilders , and public officials , he was raised in one of the city's most fashionable mansions .
A precocious youngster , he had entered Harvard College at twelve , matriculating with a little money in his pocket provided by his father , who had urged him to invest it and make it grow .
Four years later , when he graduated at sixteen , Hutchinson's little nest egg had grown by quantum leaps and was worth perhaps ten times the annual income that most workers could anticipate .
His fortune continued to grow , and by the time he turned twenty-one , Hutchinson owned eight houses , including a 100-acre estate in suburban Milton , and several lots and buildings in Boston .
He married well two years later , increasing his net worth to £ 6 , ooo .
The only surviving portrait of Hutchinson , painted in 1741 , when he was thirty , reveals a mature man who looked youthful as a teenager .
Tall and slender , with a fair complexion , he appeared soft and effete .
By the time he sat for the artist , Hutchinson had been in politics for a few years .
After serving in the Massachusetts assembly for a dozen years , he secured an appointment as a Judge of Probate and Common Pleas , despite never having studied or practiced law .
This suggests that he was well connected politically .
In fact , almost immediately upon entering public life , Hutchinson had joined with what contemporaries called the " hard money " faction in the assembly .
An anti-inflationary element that represented the greatest merchants and money-lenders , these legislators embraced economic stability .
Their stance , however , was unpopular with the general public , many of whom were in debt , or hovered about its fringes , and who relished the additional money in their pay
checks that accompanied an inflationary currency .
As Hutchinson's unpopularity grew , and it became evident that there was little likelihood that he would ever wield much power in the assembly , he linked up with what the residents of Massachusetts called the Court Party , the circle around the governor , an official who was appointed by authorities in London .
Hutchinson's patron in 1754 , when he was sent to Albany , was Governor William Shirley .
The governor , like Franklin , thought a union of the colonies was desirable , but not for the same reason .
Shirley wanted to see America brought more fully under Great Britain's control .
Like many officials in London , Shirley feared that the colonies , separated from the mother country by the 3,000 miles of blue Atlantic. were drifting apart from England .
Imperial administrative machinery was lacking for the proper enforcement of imperial policies , especially the maritime regulations , and the colonial assemblies had grown disturbingly more powerful in their battles with royal governors .
He thought it was time that more rigid controls should be implemented .
A union of the colonies , properly subservient to Parliament and the Crown , yet draining power away from the local provinces , was just the vehicle for accomplishing these ends .
Hutchinson was sent to Albany to pursue this goal .
Hutchinson , like Shirley , favored an American union , but not for the reasons that moved the governor or Franklin .
His objective , as had been the case with many in Massachusetts during the past half century , was the utter destruction of New France .
In 1691 , in the first of the intercolonial wars with France , waged two decades prior to Hutchinson's birth , Massachusetts had sent an armada of thirty-four vessels and 2,200 men to take Quebec .
Its leadership had reckoned that only the expulsion of the French , who armed the Native Americans all along Massachusetts's extensive frontier , could bring true peace and security to the province .
The attempt failed .
Not only was the attack on Quebec repulsed , but only about half the colony's soldiery survived the campaign .
Thereafter , Massachusetts understood that it could eliminate the French only with help both from the other colonies and Great Britain .
Hutchinson came to Albany to fashion a union of provinces that would help secure Massachusetts's ends .
He unveiled a plan that urged Parliament to form two confederations , one of the eight northern colonies , and a separate union consisting of the southern provinces .
The two were to be created " for their Mutual Defence & Security & for extending the British Settlements Northward & Westward " .
In the event of war , the Southern union would cope with the overextended French in the Ohio Country , while the Northern union would invade New France " .
Benjamin Franklin arrived in Albany with a paper he had drafted during his brief stay in Manhattan en route to the conference .
He titled it " Short Hints towards a Scheme for a General Union of the British on the Continent " .
Unlike Hutchinson , he proposed one union that would consist of all thirteen mainland colonies , and he recommended that it be created by the colonists , rather than by Parliament .
The government of the American confederation was to include a chief executive , who was to be " a Military man " appointed by the Crown , and an elected assembly in which the number of representatives allotted each colony was to be determined by the size of its population .
The powers of this national government would be limited to matters of Indian diplomacy and national defense , and would include " every thing that shall be found necessary for the defence and support of the Colonies in General , and encreasing and extending their settlements " .
Franklin closed with the recommendation that the Albany Congress adopt the plan , after which it would " be sent home " for the consideration of Parliament .
The various plans introduced at Albany were not the first instances when American colonists had contemplated acting in concert or had considered the establishment of a political confederation .
However , only the Puritan colonies in seventeenth-century New England had succeeded in actually forming a federation of sorts , and in reality it was never more than a defensive league against regional Indian tribes .
Outside New England , each province dealt unilaterally with nearby Native Americans , but when Britain's struggles with France and Spain began , plans of union and calls for a greater centralization of authority mushroomed .
At least eleven plans of union are known to have been concocted after 1689 , pouring forth from essayists , merchants , a founder of a colony , a governor , colonial officeholders - especially those whose responsibilities included Indian concerns - and imperial officials , including a member of the Board of Trade .
The goal of military coordination lurked behind every plan , if in fact defense was not the sole reason for every proposed supergovernment .
Most contemplated a national union , one that could set quotas for men and revenues in wartime , raise armies , and dispatch militia units from one colony to another , an act that was prohibited by the laws of most provinces .
None of these plans came into being .
Each colony had a long , unbroken history as a separate entity .
Each had its own charter , institutions , history , statutes , and identity .
Each was independent of the others , generally liked it that way , and hoped to remain unfettered by ties to anyone , save the mother country .
The provincials saw dangers in each proposed scheme .
The smaller colonies always chafed at the prospect of being underrepresented in a national congress dominated by the largest colonies .
Men with influence in the provincial government feared losing their clout in a large confederation .
Provincial taxpayers were loath to pay additional duties to still another government , especially to a central government over which they might exercise little leverage with regard to who was taxed and how the tax dollars were spent .
Among a people who had fled Europe to escape tyranny , civil and religious , it was unnerving to consider the prospect of surrendering local autonomy and leaping into a strange new union , in which distant provinces , and faraway London , would exercise formidable power .
Insularity prevailed .
Each colony cried out for its security and sought to protect and further its vital interests , but few conceived a common bond with all , or even many , other British provinces in North America .
Historically , they had looked across the Atlantic to the parent state , not across the borders to their neighboring American provinces .
Indeed , the colonies often had strikingly different interests .
Some traded with the Indians to a far greater degree than others .
Some had extensive claims to western lands ; others had none .
Massachusetts at times wished to fight to secure fishing rights off Newfoundland , or coal deposits in Nova Scotia , or timberlands in Maine whose products were essential in its ship construction yards .
Those were not burning issues in the Carolinas or Georgia , which were preoccupied with trade with the Indians in the Southern backcountry , while they kept a wary eye on the Spanish in nearby Florida .
Nor did every colony always feel threatened , even in the midst of war .
Massachusetts , New York , and Connecticut had the misfortune to be hit hard by each of the previous intercolonial wars , but Maryland and New Jersey were hardly scathed , and before the 1740s Virginians were barely aware that the European powers were fighting one another in North America .
At times , the imperial government attempted to induce the colonies to act in concert , but it too had little success .
Aware that some colonies neither defended themselves nor provided aid to their neighbors during wartime , the Board of Trade - the British government body that supervised colonial affairs - had longed to royalize each province , in which case all governors would be appointed by the Crown and all would be made to march to the same drummer .
During a period of twenty years , into the 1720s , it repeatedly sought Parliament's endorsement for altering the colonial charters .
It always failed , due to opposition from the colonial governments and vested interests in Britain itself .
The Board even tried to accomplish its ends through the judicial process , but that failed as well .
Defeated at every turn , the Board in 1721 simply proposed the construction of a string of frontier forts " at the two heads of the Colonies , North and South " , and the reassignment of eight regiments of British regulars to America to guard those outposts .
Little came of either recommendation .
In the absence of any confederation , desperate colonial leaders sometimes had attempted to orchestrate collaborative military initiatives with their neighbors , but those efforts rarely succeeded .
In 1690 during King William's War , New York and the New England colonies , each of which possessed a vast frontier that was vulnerable to French and Indian attacks , had eagerly sought to coordinate their military strategies , but the partners soon were torn asunder by conflicting interests .
New England wished to strike at Quebec , the heart of New France .
New York favored a more modest objective , the pacification of its Champlain Valley , through which its enemies often debouched .
The two parties eventually compromised on a two-pronged offensive , with one force , assisted by their Iroquois allies , campaigning in the West , the other striking down the St. Lawrence at the capital .
Weak and divided , both campaigns failed .
Outraged New Englanders blamed the failure on New York .
In fact , when the governor of the latter province subsequently proposed the creation of an intercolonial defense fund for fighting the French , Massachusetts's governor roared that he would " not send a man or a farthing of money to the assistance of New York " .
It soon was New York's turn to fume .
When the French in 1693 took advantage of New York's weakness and struck through the Champlain Valley , destroying frontier settlements , New England refused its neighbor's entreaties for a helping hand .
Moreover , when London subsequently directed several colonies to contribute men to an American army that was to be established to defend the New York frontier , not one colony obeyed .
Despite this long-standing indifference , or hostility , to cooperative endeavors , signs abounded that a new spirit existed in 1754 .
In part this was due to the realization that the colonists ' most spectacular military successes had always grown out of joint endeavors between several provinces and Great Britain .
Nova Scotia had been captured in Queen Anne's War when the four New England colonies raised an army of 3,500 men and the imperial government furnished a powerful naval arm .
In King George's War , Louisbourg , which guarded the approaches to the St. Lawrence , had been taken by a New England army of over 3,000 men that acted in concert with a royal fleet of nearly 100 vessels .
In addition , as Franklin later remarked , many suddenly wished for a confederation now that hopes for westward expansion were imperiled , as never before , by a formidable enemy .
Some among the delegates at Albany saw an American union as a deterrent to war and believed , as did Franklin , that the " disunited state " of the colonies encouraged French aggression .
Experience also taught these delegates that little hope existed of the provinces acting in concert to overcome the common threat unless a confederation existed to provide central guidance .
That very spring , in fact , as these delegates well knew , only South Carolina had responded with troops to Virginia's entreaties for help when the Virginia Regiment marched to the disputed lands at the head of the Ohio River .
One additional point was crucial in shaping the thinking of those at Albany .
At some point in their deliberations , perhaps when the committee cobbled together a plan from the many that had been introduced , word arrived of Colonel Washington's bloody ambush of the French party at Jumonville's Glen .
Now that French blood had been spilled , what previously had been a prospect of war changed immediately to the reality of war .
Four days after the committee heard the first plan of union , on June 28 , it proposed a scheme for the consideration of the Albany Congress .
Although some changes had occurred in committee , the final product closely resembled Franklin's sketchy plan , and like Franklin's it too was entitled " Short Hints " .
The Congress debated the proposal for ten days .
Some discussion revolved about the limits of London's power over an American confederation , or " Their power of hurting us " , as one delegate candidly remarked .
Most , like Franklin , thought America's security so gravely threatened that the colonists had no choice but to act and hope for the best .
Form a union , Franklin said , extend greater sway to London than ever before , and " make as good a night of it as we can " .
Some deliberation also took place over the colonists ' freedom of trade with other imperial powers .
Even the utilization of the Mississippi River , far , far to the west , crept into the discussion .
Congress made additional changes , particularly with regard to the proposed sections concerning taxation , representation , and land policies .
Nevertheless , the final product was sufficiently similar to Franklin's original proposal that he might fairly be thought the father of the Albany Plan of Union .
This plan urged that Parliament sanction a union of eleven mainland colonies .
Georgia , founded only twenty years before and still in a primitive state , and tiny Delaware , which many yet thought of as part of Pennsylvania , as in fact it had been until recently , were excluded .
The government was to include a President General appointed by the Crown and a Grand Council , the national legislature , which was to consist of forty-eight members elected for three-year terms by whomever each province designated as qualified voters .
Representation and taxation were initially to be based on population .
Massachusetts and Virginia , for instance , were each to have seven representatives , and New Hampshire and Rhode Island would have two apiece ; the others were to fall somewhere in between .
In time , however , the number of representatives allotted to each colony was to be made proportional to the amount of taxes paid .
The Council was to meet annually in Philadelphia , but could be summoned to emergency meetings by the executive .
It could elect its speaker and could be dissolved , or prorogued , by the executive .
The Albany Plan proposed that the President General , with the advice and consent of the assembly , could declare war and make peace , negotiate treaties , regulate trade , and arrange land transactions .
The central government was authorized to equip vessels of war and raise armies , but it could only conscript men with the consent of the colonial assemblies .
It could build forts , administer territorial expansion , and regulate new western settlements .
The assembly could levy taxes that " to them shall appear most equal and Just " , but in so doing it was not only to consider the citizenry's ability to pay but also to focus as much as possible on luxury items .
All legislative enactments required the assent of the executive and could be invalidated within three Years by the Privy Council in London .
The Albany Plan was adopted unanimously and sent to London and to each colony for approval .
The plan did not fare well on either side of the Atlantic .
The prime minister and his cabinet , or ministry , having learned of the firelight at Jumonville's Glen , had committed two regiments of British regulars to North America just ten days before the Albany Plan reached London .
This force was to clear the head of the Ohio of all enemy personnel .
London also had ordered the colonies to raise up to 3,000 men to augment the redcoats , directed the colonial governors to make available supplies , transportation , and quarters for the soldiery. and commanded that the provinces establish a common defense fund for covering a part of the cost of this initiative .
Word of the Albany Plan did not cause the imperial officials to reconsider their earlier steps .
Many powerful figures , such as the Speaker of the House of Commons , fretted that " an Independency upon this country [ is ] to be feared from such an union " of the colonies .
Although more the product of ruffled paranoia than cold reason , there were those who suspected that an American revolt to separate from the empire had long been in gestation , especially in New England , home to the descendants of the Puritans , and that a union of the colonies would only facilitate such treachery .
Even with a cataclysmic war apparently under way in America's dark , tangled interior , London superciliously concluded - as Franklin put it - that an American " Union might make the Colonies in some degree [ as ] formidable to the Mother Country ... as to the Enemy " .
The Albany Plan foundered in America as well , smashed by the age-old fears that had wrecked so many previously proposed schemes of union .
The Massachusetts assembly obsessed that Parliament would use the American government for " gaining power over the Colonies " , Governor Shirley had a different take .
The legislators , he said , " don't like the plan ... which all of them conceive to infringe upon the Colony - liberties & privileges " .
Rhode Island worried that it might ultimately destroy the existing colonial charters .
Connecticut declared that to grant revenue raising powers to a central government was " a very extraordinary thing , and against the rights and privileges of Englishmen " .
Likewise , Pennsylvania's assembly , acting on a day when Franklin was not in attendance , rejected the proposed union .
Powerful men in Virginia , fearful that a national congress dominated by populous northern colonies might scuttle their province's title to western lands , blocked the House of Burgesses from even considering the proposed union .
Although in a couple of instances one house of an assembly endorsed the proposal , not a single colony approved the Albany Plan of Union .
Although the push for an American union with central authority over colonial affairs had been a chimerical quest , Great Britain sought to win the French and Indian War - as the conflict that was officially declared two years after the Albany Congress often has been called through centralized direction .
Imperial officials were always in charge .
General Edward Braddock , who led the regiments sent across the Atlantic soon after the meeting in Albany , was initially in overall command and in charge of the common defense fund .
Following Braddock's death in battle on the Monongahela in July 1755 , Governor Shirley was named the commander-in-chief of Anglo-American operations .
Military figures ultimately succeeded him , beginning with John Campbell , the fourth earl of Loudoun , who took charge late in 1756 .
Loudoun sought to bring order and efficiency into the colonists ' war effort .
To remedy a chaotic logistical situation , he hired crews and set them to work widening roads , improving portages , and constructing way stations , and he even standardized the size of bateaux and scows used in supplying the Anglo-American armies .
Loudoun was outraged to find that merchants in many colonies were trading with the enemy and that corrupt , or inept , royal governors often did nothing to stop them .
Nor did Loudoun shrink from using his powers to attempt to stamp out the illicit commerce .
In fact , in short order Loudoun reached the identical conclusion that Franklin and Hutchinson , and others at Albany , had mooted following King George's War .
The provincials , Loudoun came to believe , were so divided by their multitudinous selfish interests that they were incapable of waging an intercolonial war with any degree of efficiency .
By 1757 he had marched step-by-step in the same direction that the Albany Congress had longed to go : toward greater centralized control of the war effort .
Loudoun's cranky dislike of the Americans hardened into contempt as the British and their colonists suffered a nearly unbroken chain of disasters in the first years of hostilities .
Braddock's force was decimated in an encounter on the Monongahela River , near the Forks of the Ohio , in July 1755 .
The following year Colonel Washington's Virginia Regiment , which no longer received any assistance from its neighbors , lost one third of its men in the ghastly frontier fighting .
Indeed , by the end of 1756 Washington , flailed with agitation , acknowledged the loss of the Shenandoah Valley .
That was the story throughout America .
Georgia's lieutenant governor reported that the " frontier , instead of being covered by Forts , is entirely destitute of any , at least , that are not in ruins " .
According to a Philadelphia newspaper , " nothing but Murdering and Captivating ... by Indians " prevailed on the Pennsylvania frontier .
A royal official in Rhode Island , with lancing invective , attributed the colonists ' dire predicament to their excessive individualism .
In America , he said , " all seek their own , every Man his private Gain , pursuing a distinct and separate Interest from that of his Majesty and the public " .
No one understood this better than young Colonel Washington .
Lamenting the lack of cooperation , he predicted that " without a much greater number of Men than we have a visible prospect of getting " , conditions inevitably would " assume a more melancholy appearance " .
But steadily larger numbers of men arrived from Great Britain in 1758 and thereafter .
They crossed the Atlantic , sent by a new prime minister , William Pitt , who understood that conditions had to be changed .
Pitt secured new allies in Europe , whose armies took on the fight against the French on the continent .
This enabled him to send 20,000 British regulars across the Atlantic , more than ten times the number that Braddock had brought , to fight in the American theater .
He asked the colonies to raise nearly an equal number of men , and established manpower quotas for each colony .
He also promised to reimburse each province at war's end for supplying and paying its soldiers .
In 1758 Massachusetts raised an army of 7,200 men , Connecticut put 5,000 under arms , and tiny Rhode Island and New Hampshire each fielded armies of 300 men .
Altogether , the Northern colonies alone raised 16,300 men that year , a total that nearly exceeded the number raised by these colonies in the two previous years combined .
Overall strategy was planned in London , and troop allocation decisions were generally made in Whitehall , the seat of the ministry , as well .
Pitt never set out to unify the colonies , and the provinces did not fight in 1758 or thereafter , in a unified manner .
However , joint Anglo-American operations , a rare occurrence in the earlier wars , became commonplace .
In the crucial struggles between 1758 and 1760 , several Northern provinces contributed men who served alongside British regulars at the front in New York and New France , while many Southern provinces sent troops to campaign with His Majesty's regiments in the battle for the Ohio Country .
In the climactic campaigns for New France , up to half the soldiery consisted of colonials , and even more when it is remembered that thousands of militiamen were simultaneously summoned to duty to guard the frontier nearer the home front .
Pitt's central leadership resulted in a greater coordination and cohesion of the colonial war effort , not least in acting on his conviction that victory hinged on " carrying War into the Heart of the Enemy's Possessions " .
Principally , this meant that Quebec must be the primary objective in securing victory .
It was an axiom that generations of New England's leaders had carried to London , which Hutchinson had conveyed at Albany , and which one ministry after another had largely ignored .
But when Quebec fell in 1759 , New France was doomed .
News of the capture of Quebec triggered a jubilee in the northern provinces .
Philadelphians put candles in their windows , and New Yorkers built a great bonfire .
Bostonians outdid both .
After three-quarters of a century of failed attempts to take the capital of New France , Boston's militia paraded and fired artillery , churches throughout the city rang their bells from sunrise to sunset , special worship services were conducted , and the elite celebrated at a festive banquet at Faneuil Hall .
Anglo-America was victorious , and the joint operations of British redcoats and the American soldiery had been crucial in securing that victory .
Nevertheless , joint operations were not the same as unity .
The war had ended satisfactorily for the provinces , yet as time passed , some saw clearly how the creation of an American national government during this war might have changed the course of history .
Franklin understood .
Reminiscing on the Albany Plan in his memoirs , he wrote with dismay : " I am still of opinion it would have been happy for both sides of the water if it had been adopted .
The colonies , so united , could have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves ; there would then have been no need of troops from England " .
London would neither have been driven deeply into debt by this war , he added , nor would it have felt the necessity afterwards to tax the provinces , which helped trigger the American Revolution .
" But such mistakes are not new " , Franklin added .
Most leaders do not like to contemplate change .
" The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom but forced by the occasion " .
Left unsaid , but implied as a disquieting reality in Franklin's reminiscence , was his conviction that had the Albany Plan been adopted , the American Revolution would not have occurred , at least not in his lifetime .