The Albany Plan of Union

With war against France brewing on the frontier, delegates from seven colonies met British officials and Iroquois leaders at Albany, New York. Benjamin Franklin brought a proposal: one general government for the colonies, with a President General appointed by the Crown and a Grand Council elected by the colonial assemblies. It would handle defense, Indian relations, and western lands, and it could raise taxes for those purposes.

The congress approved the plan on July 10, but every colonial assembly rejected it as too great a loss of local power, and London ignored it as too much colonial independence. It failed, but it was the first serious attempt to join the colonies under one government. Franklin later said he believed that if it had been adopted, the break with Britain might have been avoided. Many of its ideas, including a shared legislature with representation weighted by population, reappeared in the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

Two months earlier, Franklin had printed the "Join, or Die" cartoon in his Pennsylvania Gazette, a snake cut into pieces labeled with the colonies. It became one of the first American political cartoons and was revived during the Revolution.