10. Franklin’s Albany Plan of 1754
In March 1751, concerned with the need for colonial unity to provide for defense against the French and their Native allies, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to one of his printing partners, James Parker. In it, he wrote, “…It would be a very strange thing, if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union, and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies…” Franklin’s backhanded comment on the Iroquois as “ignorant savages” did not diminish his enthusiasm for their form of government, and he proposed a “Grand Council” of representatives from the colonies, overseen by a governor under the authority of the British Crown. He advocated for a united colonial government, modeled on the Iroquois Confederation.
Three years later he presented it as a form of colonial government at the Albany Conference, called to address mutual colonial defense. George Washington had just surrendered a small force of Virginia militia, and full-blown war with France was imminent. The Albany Conference rejected Franklin’s plan, as did the British Board of Trade, which had initially called for the conference. Franklin’s plan remained in the back of his mind, and following the French and Indian War, he again brought it to the fore during the Second Continental Congress, as that body deliberated the new form of government to be installed after the 13 colonies became 13 independent states by the declaration in 1776. Those deliberations led to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation in 1777, the document by which the United States was governed for the next decade.