Episode 3 - In Which the Colonies Consider Cooperation, Briefly

In the summer of 1754, as French forts crept ever closer to the contested frontiers of North America, representatives from seven British colonies gathered at Albany, New York, to discuss a problem everyone could see coming- and few seemed eager to solve. The result was the Abany Congress, a rare moment of attempted cooperation in a world defined by jealousy, fear, and mutual suspicion. While emissaries negotiated with the Iroquois and delegates debated plans of defense, the shadow of imperial rivalry loomed large over every handshake and half-hearted toast.

At the center of it all stood Benjaminn Franklin, who arrived with wit, political savvy, and a bod idea: a plan to unite the colonies under a common government for mutual defense. It was, by the standards of the day, visionary - and by the standards of colonial politics, utterly doomed. In the end they were only able to agree one one thing: to do nothing.

But in that failure lay a glimpse of the future - a spark of unity that wouldn't try ignite for another 20 years. the Albany Congress may have accomplished little, but its echoes would shape everything to come.

 If you’re curious how a broken meeting could prefigure a revolution, how Iroquois diplomacy shaped outcomes, and why “Join, or Die” first meant union under the Crown, this story delivers all the connective tissue.

Enjoy the episode? Follow, share with a history-loving friend, and leave a quick review telling us: would you have voted for Franklin’s plan—or slammed the door?

Chapters

• 0:00 Fractious Colonies, Rising Crisis
• 6:00 How Colonial Government Really Worked
• 11:00 Frontier Panic After Fort Necessity
• 14:15 William Shirley’s Imperial Blueprint
• 18:20 Why Albany Mattered
• 22:40 The Covenant Chain Under Strain
• 27:00 William Johnson, Interpreter-in-Chief
• 31:20 Delegates, Agendas, and Virginia’s Empty Chair
• 36:40 Two Meetings, One Fire: Iroquois Diplomacy
• 43:00 Franklin’s Albany Plan Unveiled
• 48:00 Rejection From Both Sides
• 52:30 From Talk to Teeth: Braddock Arrives
• 57:00 What Albany Failed to Do—and Started

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Hello, and welcome to the History of the Seven Years War. I'm your host, Rob Hill. So, picture the scene. It's 1754. Washington has just gotten himself into trouble in the Ohio country, signing a surrender document he didn't fully understand, and the French are happily building forts right where Britain insists they shouldn't be. But before London could ship an army across the Atlantic, somebody had to figure out a more immediate question. Could the colonies actually work together to handle this crisis? And the answer to that question, at least at this moment in time, was a loud, clear, resounding. Eh, probably not. Because if there was one thing the British colonies in North America excelled at in the mid eighteenth century, it was jealously guarding their independence from each other. Each colony had its own governor, its own assembly, its own legal traditions, its own little political squabbles. Massachusetts looked down on its neighbors as too soft. New York thought everyone was too provincial. Pennsylvania insisted it was above all that petty fighting while simultaneously refusing to spend money on defending its western frontier. And Virginia, of course, thought of itself as the natural leader of them all. After all, they were the first, the oldest, and the biggest. The most important thing to understand here is that in 1754, nobody in Boston or Philadelphia or Williamsburg thought of themselves as Americans. They thought of themselves as New Englanders, or Pennsylvanians, or Virginians, and they were intensely proud of their particular colonial charters, their elected assemblies, and their ability to thumb their noses at royal governors when it suited them. So, when we talk about the Albany Congress and about the first hints of colonial cooperation, we need to remember this was not a group of future revolutionaries trying to build a nation. This was a group of people who wanted to protect their privileges, defend their borders, and, ideally, get London to foot the bill for it all. Now, this doesn't mean the colonies had never tried to work together. They had, occasionally, and usually in moments of crisis. Back in the sixteen forties, during one of those periods when England itself was too busy fighting a civil war to notice what the colonies were doing, four New England colonies, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, created something called the New England Confederation. The idea was mutual defense against native groups and the Dutch. On paper, it looked a lot like a proto union. In practice, it mostly amounted to arguing about who would contribute how many men and who would have to pay for them. The Confederation technically lasted for several decades, but by the time Charles II was back on the throne, it was a shell of itself. Then there were the joint expeditions against Canada. The colonies could, when prodded, put together some fairly impressive military cooperation. Armies had marched against the French in Canada in the late sixteen hundreds and early seventeen hundreds. They'd also experimented with issuing shared paper money to fund the campaigns. But the problem with joint expeditions was always the same. Each colony wanted to run things their way. No one wanted to pay more than their neighbors, and when things went badly, they all blamed each other. So the colonies had a history of trying to cooperate, yes, but they also had a history of those efforts dissolving into bickering, finger pointing, and complaints about taxation. And when we get to the Albany Congress, we'll see that pattern repeat itself in almost comic fashion. Now, here's the other thing we need to remember. In seventeen fifty four, these colonists were definitely not proto revolutionaries. They were not sitting in taverns muttering about independence. They thought of themselves as loyal Englishmen. They drank tea, they read London newspapers, they decorated their parlours with portraits of King George II. Their lawyers studied English common law, their merchants traded in London goods, and when they thought about their rights and privileges, they thought about them within the framework of English law. If you'd told the delegates at Albany in seventeen fifty four that in twenty years time their sons would be signing the Declaration of Independence, they'd probably have laughed in your face. Or asked what on earth would have happened to make London that unreasonable. So when they talked about Union at Albany, they weren't talking about separating from Britain, they were talking about how best to preserve their colonial liberties and protect the Empire against the French, while making sure London didn't trample too hard on their assemblies. But to really understand why that was such a delicate balancing act, we need to zoom in for a second on how colonial government actually worked. Because while colonists thought of themselves as proud Englishmen, their political institutions, assemblies, governors, and councils, made a very peculiar arrangement in the British system. So we'll pause here for a moment to ask then, how did the colonies actually function within the broader British system? Because if you're imagining thirteen little Westminster parliaments neatly lined up on the American coast, well, you're in for a surprise. Each colony had its own governmental structure, but they all followed a similar plan. At the top was the governor. In royal colonies, like Virginia and New York, this was a man appointed by the crown. He was supposed to be the king's man, carrying out imperial policy, managing defense, overseeing trade regulations, and generally keeping the colonists in line. In practice, governors often discovered that their ceremonial sword was about as useful as a butter knife when it came to making assemblies do what they wanted. Next came the council, usually appointed, often made up of the colonial elite. Think of it as a mix between a cabinet and a house of lords. They advised the governor, handled some judicial duties, and in theory checked the assembly. In practice, they were usually more concerned with protecting their own land deals and family interests than with grander imperial visions. Then there were the assemblies, the most important piece of the puzzle. Assemblies were elected by property holding white men, and they held the power of the purse, the right to levy taxes and appropriate funds. In an age when money equaled power, this meant the assemblies held the whip hand. So the governor could ask, demand, or even threaten, but if the assemblies refused to raise money for troops, there wasn't much he could do. Colonial governors often sent panicked letters back to London complaining that the assemblies were impossible to work with, and London often sent back sternly worded replies, which the assemblies often ignored. And speaking of London, it's important to note that these colonies were not overseen by Parliament, but rather the Board of Trade and Plantations, a body set up in the late sixteen hundreds to manage colonial affairs. Parliament mostly stayed out of colonial business, except in matters of trade regulation, because the colonies were considered the king's domain. So the colonies lived in a strange constitutional gray zone. They weren't independent, but they weren't directly represented in parliament either. They had governors who were supposed to represent the crown, but governors were powerless without the assemblies. Assemblies jealously guarded their rights, but they also expected the Empire to defend them. And if that sounds like a recipe for endless bickering and dysfunction, well yes, yes it was. One British official famously quipped that getting the colonies to agree on anything was like driving wild hogs, each squealing in a different direction. And when you look at the Albany Congress, we'll see how accurate that image really was. On the frontier, Washington's defeat at Fort Necessity in July of seventeen fifty four sent shock waves. If the French could march into contested Ohio country, brush aside Virginia militia, and build forts with impunity, what was to stop them from coming over the Alleghenies next? Colonists on the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers packed up what they could carry and fled eastward. Governors sent frantic letters to London describing a state of terror on the frontier. And in taverns from Williamsburg to Boston, everyone had an opinion about how this was surely the first step in a French plan to surround and strangle the English colonies. Now, panic on the frontier wasn't new. If you lived out there, raids and rumors of raids were a fact of life. But what made this moment different was a sense that the French had decisively seized the initiative, and the British response, so far, had been an underwhelming display of amateur militia and a young officer with more enthusiasm than training. So something had to be done. And here's where London finally stepped in with clear instructions. The Board of Trade, the body technically in charge of the colonial affairs, sent down word that two things needed to happen immediately. One, the colonies had to coordinate their diplomacy with native nations, particularly the Iroquois Confederacy, who were the linchpin of Britain's alliance system in North America. Two, the colonies had to coordinate their defense, ideally pooling resources and men so that the French could be met with something resembling a uniformed front rather than thirteen squealing hogs running in separate directions. Which brings us to William Shirley, governor of Massachusetts. Now, Shirley is one of those figures who pops up a lot in this story, but rarely gets top billing. He was trained as a lawyer, came to Massachusetts in the seventeen thirties, and by the seventeen forties had worked his way up to governor. He was ambitious, he was sharp, and above all, he was a man who believed in the crown and the Empire. If Franklin was the visionary pragmatist of Albany, surely was the Empire's lawyer. He thought in terms of precedence, charters, and legal authority. He believed the colonies needed to act in concert, yes, but under the firm direction of the crown, and he had a knack for organizing large scale operations, like the capture of Lewisburg in seventeen forty five. In many ways, Shirley foreshadows the imperial side of the revolution. He represents the idea that the colonies should be more tightly organized, more efficient, more coordinated, but always part of Britain, under British law. So, when London began to think about how to respond to the French threat in the Ohio Valley, Shirley was one of the men they turned to, and while he didn't personally attend the Albany Congress, his fingerprints were all over it. His reports, his lobbying, his constant reminders of imperial law and obligation, all of that shaped the framework of what Albany was supposed to accomplish. Shirley had been hammering away for years that Britain needed a more centralized colonial policy. The French, he argued, were coordinated, disciplined, and building an arc of forts across the continent. If Britain hoped to hold her ground, the colonies needed to act together and under the crown's firm hand. So, when London asked how best to handle this urgent crisis, Shirley was among the strongest voices pushing for an intercolonial meeting. But why hold such a meeting at Albany of all places? Well, for one thing, Albany had long been a hub of diplomacy with the Iroquois Confederation. Going all the way back to the sixteen hundreds, Albany had been the favorite site for treaty councils between English colonial officials and Iroquois Sachems. The Mohawk Valley was essentially the eastern doorway of the Iroquois world, and Albany's Dutch descendant merchants had cultivated longstanding ties of trade and trust with the six nations. Add to that the geography. Albany sat at the hinge of the Hudson Mohawk Corridor, the main inland route from New York to the interior. Whoever controlled Albany controlled the artery that connected the coast to the Great Lakes and beyond. It was an obvious place for both diplomacy and strategy. So Albany it would be. And while we're here, we'll pause for a quick history of the city itself. The Dutch first founded it as Fort Orange back in the early 1600s, part of the colony of New Netherland. It sat upriver from New Amsterdam, today's New York City, and became a vital post in the fur trade. After the English took over in 1664, the town was renamed Albany, in honor of the Duke of Albany, who, fun fact, was the same guy who became James II before he was tossed out in the Glorious Revolution. So, in a way, Albany is forever linked to the English monarchy's least popular uncle. The town remained a commercial hub, dominated by Dutch descended merchant families who had learned how to navigate both English law and native diplomacy. By the mid eighteenth century, Albany, while less cosmopolitan than New York City, was far more strategically placed. It was a natural crossroads of empire, and thus a natural place to host a grand conference. To better understand what the Albany Congress was trying to accomplish with the first directive from London, we have to talk about the Covenant Chain. The term itself dates back to the seventeenth century, when English officials and Iroquois Sachems hammered out a series of agreements in New York. The metaphor was simple but powerful. There was a chain binding the Iroquois and the English together, sometimes described as a silver chain, sometimes as iron, but always a chain that had to be polished and maintained so it would not rust. What did this mean in practice? Well, the Iroquois conceived of diplomacy in familial terms. They called the English their younger brothers, with the Iroquois as the older brothers guiding them. The chain was supposed to be a guarantee of peace, trade, and mutual defense, and the regular treaty councils in Albany were the ritual meetings when the two came together to brighten the chain with speeches, wampum belts, and reaffirmed promises. On paper it was an alliance of equals. In practice, it was a complicated dance of power and necessity. For the English, the covenant chain was the diplomatic shield that kept the Iroquois from aligning with the French, and ideally, kept them on Britain's side in wars. The Iroquois, meanwhile, saw it as a tool of leverage. They were careful not to be anyone's pawn. Their great diplomatic strategy was what historians call the playoff system, balance the French against the English, extract gifts, concessions, and promises from both, and preserve their own autonomy. By the seventeen fifties, however, the Covenant chain was under serious strain. Iroquois leaders increasingly complained that the English were not living up to their end of the bargain. Settlers, especially in Pennsylvania and Virginia, pushed into native lands despite treaty promises. Colonial officials were slow or reluctant to deliver the gifts that were supposed to keep the chain bright, and as the French stepped up their diplomacy in the Ohio Valley, Iroquois voices grew louder, warning that the English seemed to take their allies for granted. Which is exactly why Albany mattered. The seventeen fifty four Congress was not only about colonies uniting with each other, it was about repolishing the covenant chain at a moment when it looked dangerously close to snapping. And here is where William Johnson enters the story. William Johnson was an Irishman by birth, sent over in the seventeen thirties to manage his uncle's estates in the Mohawk Valley. He quickly distinguished himself as one of the very few colonial officials who actually learned native languages, adopted native customs, and built real relationships within the Mohawk. He traded with them, lived among them, and even took Mohawk partners and raised children with them. By the seventeen forties and fifties, Johnson was the crown's most trusted agent in dealing with the Iroquois. His Mohawk neighbors respected him, nicknaming him Warayagi, roughly a man who undertakes many things. And London valued him precisely because he could do what most colonial governors could not speak to native leaders on something like equal footing. At Albany in seventeen fifty four, Johnson's presence was crucial. William Shirley may have been an architect of the Congress, but Johnson was the man the Iroquois actually listened to. He understood their metaphors, their rituals, and their grievances. Without him, it was hard to imagine the covenant chain being polished at all. So, when the colonial delegates gathered in Albany, they weren't just there to talk to each other about unity, they were there to sit across the council fire from Iroquois Sachems, with William Johnson as their indispensable translator, both of language and of culture, trying to keep the alliance alive in the face of French encroachment and colonial missteps. William Shirley seized on all of this with characteristic lawyerly precision. He framed the Albany meeting not as a colonial experiment, but as an imperial necessity. The French, he warned, were systematically fortifying the interior. The Iroquois were wavering. Unless Britain presented a united front, colonies and crown together, its legal claims to North America could crumble. So Shirley drafted proposals, sent dispatches, and argued relentlessly that Albany was not just a good idea, but essential for the preservation of British law, British claims, and British order. And so, in the summer of seventeen fifty four, delegates from seven colonies, stretching from New England to Maryland, set out for Albany to meet with the Iroquois and to wrestle yet again with the thorny question of colonial unity. So it's July of seventeen fifty four. The stage is Albany, New York, a bustling little frontier town that was part Dutch trading post, part English fort, and part longhouse for Iroquois diplomacy. And now, with Washington's defeat still fresh and the frontier in panic, seven colonies answer the call to meet here. The lineup was Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, which is a pretty decent turnout considering that colonial unity was usually about as easy to achieve as getting seven cats to agree on dinner. And right away, one absence stands out Virginia. Now, you might think Virginia would be at the table, given that it was their young officer who started this whole crisis by stumbling into the French at Jominville Glen and then losing Fort Necessity. But no, Virginia was too busy licking its wounds and dealing with a political fallout from Washington's fiasco. The House of Burgesses was in no mood to send delegates north to talk about pancolonial cooperation. They had their hands full managing recriminations at home, which meant other colonies would be debating the frontier crisis without the colony that had just set it all off. Classic. So let's take a moment here to introduce some of the major personalities and delegates who were there, what they wanted, how they would go on to shape the Congress, and a little about what the future holds for some of them as well. Now, if there's one delegate who towered above the rest in terms of historical reputation, it was Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. By this point, Franklin was already something of a colonial rock star. He'd published poor Richard's almanac for over two decades, dispensing wisdom like fish and visitors stink after about three days, which, given the length of the Albany Congress, may or may not have been a veiled warning to his fellow delegates. Franklin was also a polymath, printer, inventor, scientist, postmaster, and occasional diplomat. Just before arriving at Albany, he had published his now famous cartoon of a snake, chopped into eight labeled pieces with the warning join or die. The first great piece of American political propaganda and proof that Franklin understood branding long before Madison Avenue. At Albany, Franklin had a clear agenda. The colonies needed unity, not revolution, not independence, just something better than squabbling assemblies sending their own little militias off into the woods. His Albany plan of union would be unveiled here, and while it wouldn't pass, it planted seeds that would come up again in twenty years. Franklin, characteristically, brought humor to serious matters. There's an apocryphal story that when other delegates objected to the colonies being compared to chopped up snake parts, Franklin quipped that he considered drawing the colonies as a roast pig, but thought better of it. This probably false, but it's the sort of thing Franklin might have said, which is almost as good. Up next, Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts. Sharp, ambitious, and very much a lawyer's lawyer. Hutchinson came from a wealthy Boston family and saw his future tied to the Empire. He was everything Franklin wasn't. Reserved where Franklin was witty, legalistic where Franklin was breezy. Hutchinson believed the colonies could and should work within the framework of the crown. To him, Albany wasn't a step toward independence, but toward efficiency, better organization, smoother governance, and a stronger empire. If Franklin saw unity as insurance, Hutchinson saw it as administration. Hutchinson was ambitious, no doubt. He had a clear eye for power, and he also had a vision for Massachusetts as a linchpin of imperial strength in North America. But here in Albany, he was a respectable and serious figure, trying to balance Massachusetts' fierce independence with the undeniable need for greater coordination in the face of French aggression. Of course, later, Hutchinson would be infamous as the colonial governor who tried to hold Boston steady during the Stamp Act crisis, and who got his house literally torn apart by a mob. But in 1754, he was still seen as a solid voice of reason, and one of the sharper minds in Massachusetts politics. You could almost say Hutchinson was the Braddock of political debate, utterly convinced he was right, completely confident in his grasp of the rules, and utterly baffled when other people didn't just fall in line. Then we come back to William Johnson of New York. Born in Ireland, Johnson had made himself indispensable to Britain's relations with the Iroquois. He lived on the frontier, spoke Mohawk, married into a Mohawk family, and cultivated a persona that made him half English gentleman, half Iroquois Sachem. The Iroquois respected him, and the colonists relied on him, and London found him useful, which is another way of saying everyone thought they were using him, while Johnson was quietly ensuring that he used them. Johnson also had a flair for the dramatic. At councils he would sometimes address in part Iroquois regalia, partially out of respect, and partially because he knew that looking the part gave him credibility with both sides. He could translate not just words but cultural expectations, smoothing over misunderstandings that might otherwise have ended in disaster. Of course, Johnson was also a land speculator. His personal fortune depended on westward expansion. So, while he genuinely worked to maintain the covenant chain, he also had every incentive to tilt negotiations toward outcomes that benefited him. Think of him as the colonial version of that guy at every work meeting who both knows the client's culture better than anyone else, and also somehow walks away with the biggest contract. Although not physically president Albany, William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, deserves his spotlight. Shirley was a lawyer turned politician, ambitious, legalistic, and deeply loyal to the Crown. He had been one of the architects of colonial cooperation during the last war, and he was one who had pushed hardest for the Albany Congress. Shirley was the kind of man who wrote very long, very detailed reports to London, the kind of reports that probably put half of Whitehall to sleep, but which still shaped imperial policy. His absence at Albany didn't mean he wasn't present in spirit. His framing of the meeting as an imperial necessity, not clinical freelancing, colored how London interpreted the proceedings. Shirley is a bit like the off screen narrator in a movie, always looming, always commenting, never quite visible, but somehow driving half the plot. Finally, we have Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island. Now, Rhode Island has a reputation for being, well, difficult. Fiercely independent, democratic in ways that annoyed its neighbors, and often more interested in maritime trade than in pleasing London. Hopkins fit that mold perfectly. He was a self taught intellectual, plain spoken, but clever, and not afraid to needle his fellow delegates with sharp observations. Later, he'd signed the Declaration of Independence, his shaky hand making one of the most memorable signatures on that parchment. But in seventeen fifty four, Hopkins wasn't looking to break away. He wanted to secure the colony's rights within the British system. Hopkins added a bit of color to the Albany gathering. He wasn't as famous as Franklin or as ambitious as Hutchinson, but he embodied the smaller colony's skepticism. Yes, unity was good, but not if it meant Rhode Island's independence got swallowed up by the big guys. If Franklin was the rock star, Hutchinson the lawyer, and Johnson the cultural interpreter, Hopkins was the guy at the band meeting, reminding everyone that the drummer still gets a vote. And of course, looming over all this was the absence of Virginia. Washington had just lit the match on a frontier war, but no delegates showed up for the night. From Williamsburg. This was partially because the political chaos at home, but also perfectly symbolized the colonial dilemma. Even in a crisis, even when cooperation was clearly needed, at least one colony always found a reason to sit out. So, these were the delegates at Albany Franklin the Pragmatist, Hutchinson the Loyalist, Johnson the Interpreter, Shirley the Puppet Master, Hopkins the Maverick, and Virginia, the empty chair sitting in the room. Together they were about to debate nothing less than how to keep the British Empire intact in North America. And so the Albany Congress opened in july 1754. Seven colonies gathered alongside the representatives of the Iroquois to debate how best to meet the crisis on the frontier. What came next would be a fascinating collision of interests, colonies trying to defend themselves while jealously guarding their independence, British officials pushing for imperial order, and the Iroquois making sure neither side forgot their obligations under the covenant chain. If you were standing in Albany in july seventeen fifty four, you would have heard two very different kinds of meetings taking place. In one hall, the colonial delegates argued over budgets, taxation, and whose militia would command the frontier. In another, beneath the open air, the Iroquois Sachans gathered with British and colonial envoys for something much older than parliamentary procedure the diplomacy of the covenant chain. And make no mistake, this wasn't some dry bureaucratic exchange. The Iroquois diplomacy was ceremonial, performative, and deeply symbolic. Every meeting began with the opening of the throat, a metaphorical cleansing to allow honest speech. Speeches were long, measured, and filled with allegory, and the exchange of wampum belts, rows of purple and white shell beads woven into intricate patterns, served as both record and promise. A wampum belt was not a mere gift. It was a contract, one that bound the giver and the receiver together by their words. For over half a century, the covenant chain had linked the British and the Hodnosoni, the Six Nations Confederacy of the Iroquois. The metaphor was simple but powerful, a silver chain connecting the two sides, polished and bright when the relationship was strong, tarnished and dull when it was neglected, and lately the chain was quite dull. The Iroquois came to Albany in seventeen fifty four not out of loyalty, but out of necessity and suspicion. The French were pressing into the Ohio Valley, courting tribes who were once neutral, and winning them over with gifts, trade, and military muscle. Meanwhile, the British colonists couldn't even agree on who should pay for a frontier fort, let alone defend one. So, when the British officials opened the conference with polite reassurances about friendship and mutual defense, the Iroquois Sachems, led by Hendrick Deugin, a Mohawk chief and longtime ally of William Johnson, listened patiently, smoked their pipes, and then began their own speeches. Hendrick's words, recorded by the secretaries, are among the most famous of the conference. He told the British representatives that their people were like women, a diplomatic way of saying they were indecisive and weak. They promised much and delivered little. The French built forts, the British built committees, and every time the Iroquois turned to their English brothers for help, they were told to wait until Parliament meets. You could practically hear Franklin wince. The Iroquois weren't just disappointed, they were nervous. On one hand, they wanted the British to be strong. A powerful Britain kept the French in check, and that balance of power was vital to Iroquois security. On the other hand, they feared what would happen if the British were too strong. Biscolonial expansion wasn't some abstract worry. It was happening every year. Settlers from New York, Pennsylvania, and New England were already pushing into Iroquois lands, cutting timber, laying claim to valleys, and conveniently forgetting to ask who owned them. To the Iroquois, unchecked colonial land hunger looked every bit as dangerous as French bayonets. So, when the colonial delegates spoke of alliance, the Iroquois listened with practiced skepticism. They had seen this pattern before. Promises of friendship, followed by surveys, fences, and eviction notices. Mending the covenant chain, as the British called it, sounded noble, but to the Iroquois, it also sounded like something that would need doing again in a few years, and after the next round of broken promises. In the middle of all this stood William Johnson, the man who had spent most of his adult life trying to keep the covenant chain from breaking entirely. He had the trust of many Iroquois leaders, particularly the Mohawk, and he knew their protocols by heart. Johnson understood that these meetings weren't about speed or efficiency, two things the British prized. They were about respect and symbolism. Every speech had to be answered with a gift, every promise reinforced with a belt of wampum, every misunderstanding carefully smoothed over with metaphors. But Johnson was also a crown official. He had to walk a very fine line between the Iroquois' expectations and London's bureaucratic patience. And London, frankly, didn't have much of that. Johnson had made quite the living and quite the reputation working to explain the frontier ways of politics to the crown and its various emissaries. Some listened, most didn't. The way of life and the way that they conducted politics was just anathema to the old world. At Albany he served as translator, mediator, and sometimes apologist, trying to make both sides think they'd been understood even when they hadn't. The phrase mending the covenant chain was a theme of the conference. The British wanted to renew their alliance with the Iroquois to brighten the chain and reaffirm their friendship. But beneath the ceremonial polishing, everyone knew the metal had changed. The Iroquois were still powerful, but their position was not what it had been fifty years earlier. Their influence over the Western tribes was slipping, and their unity was fraying under pressure from both European powers. Meanwhile, the British colonies were expanding rapidly, and their sheer numbers were beginning to dwarf the native population east of the mountains. The relationship was no longer a partnership of equals, it was an uneasy balancing act between necessity and mistrust. When the final belts of Wampum were exchanged, the speeches concluded, and the pipes put away. The mood was polite but strained. Both sides pledged friendship, both claimed satisfaction, but both walked away knowing that Covenant Chain had been polished for appearance's sake, not truly reforged. In retrospect, it's easy to see the Albany Congress as a missed opportunity. The Iroquois Alliance, though renewed in words, continued to weaken in substance. The same William Johnson, who had so carefully mediated these councils, would soon be leading Iroquois warriors into battle alongside British regulars in one of the first major engagements of the war, the Battle of Lake George in seventeen fifty five. Hendrick DeUgen, who had just scolded the British for being weak, would die in that very battle, fighting alongside Johnson's men. The Covenant Chain, for all its ceremonial polish, would be tested not by speeches, but by musket fire. The Iroquois walked away skeptical but pragmatic. They would back the British, at least for now, but they did so knowing full well that both Empire and Chain were starting to fray. And William Johnson, ever the interpreter, rode home from Albany with his reputation enhanced, but his task impossible. He had polished the covenant chain one more time. The question was how long would it shine before tarnishing again? If you squint, the Albany Congress looks like a rehearsal for everything that would follow in the next two decades. The colonies trying to unite and failing, the crown trying to assert control and misunderstanding everything, and native nations trying to navigate European conflict that keeps expanding over their lands. So by now, the Albany Congress had been running for weeks. The Iroquois had been heard, the government chain had been duly mended, and the delegates had endured a dozen rounds of speeches, dinners, and mutual complaints about frontier defense. But even as all the wampum belts were packed away, one question still hung over the proceedings. If the colonies were to face a common enemy, how exactly were they supposed to work together? Because right now, they couldn't even agree on who was supposed to buy the coffee. Enter Benjamin Franklin. By 1754, Franklin was already the most famous American in America, printer, publisher, inventor, philosopher, postmaster, amateur scientist, and part time civic magician. Franklin was the living embodiment of colonial practicality. If there was a problem, he would find a way to fix it, preferably with a clever diagram and a small electric shock. And at Albany he had come with something big, an idea that had been forming in his head for years, even before the Ohio Valley Crisis. He called it a plan of union, and it aimed to solve the oldest problem in colonial politics. The thirteen, well, seven in this case, children of the same empire never listening to each other. Franklin's proposal was simple in theory, radical in practice. The colonies would form a grand council, made up of delegates chosen by each colonial assembly in proportion to population and contribution. That council would handle all matters of defense, data diplomacy, and western expansion. Above it, as the imperial representative, would be a president general, appointed by the crown. Together, they would act as the British Empire's administrative arm in North America. They would raise troops, collect taxes, negotiate treaties, and, crucially, keep the colonies from acting like rival city states every time a war broke out. It was, as Franklin said later, a plan for union under the crown for the common good. Not independence, not rebellion, but cooperation within the Empire. You've probably seen Franklin's famous cartoon, a snake divided into pieces, each labeled with the initials of a colony, and E for New England, and Y for New York, P for Pennsylvania, and so on. Beneath it, the words join or die. Today, we associate that image with the American Revolution, with muskets and declarations and the cry of liberty. But in seventeen fifty four, it meant something very different. Franklin wasn't urging the colonies to break away from Britain, he was begging them to cooperate within it. The image first appeared in his Pennsylvania Gazette that May, months before the Albany Congress, as the frontier panic from Washington's defeat at Fort Necessity spread through the colonies. The message was blunt. If the colonies didn't unite for common defense, they'd be picked off one by one by the French and their native allies. In an age of pamphlets and broadsheets, it was the eighteenth century equivalent of a viral meme, widely spread, instantly recognizable, and endlessly discussed. And it worked. Everyone was talking about Franklin's idea for unity. Unfortunately, it was as far as it got. When Franklin unveiled his plan for unity at Albany, the reaction was immediate and mixed. The more idealistic delegates nodded approvingly. It made sense. One unified defense budget, one coordinated strategy, fewer redundant forts, fewer mixed signals with the Iroquois. Others, particularly from the smaller colonies, began counting seats and votes, and suddenly it made less sense. Who would control this grand council? How much power would it have over local taxes? Would Massachusetts have to pay for forts in New York? Would Pennsylvania's pacifist assembly be forced to raise troops? And most heretically, what would happen to the authority of the individual assemblies? To many delegates, Franklin's plan smelled like the first step towards some kind of colonial parliament, one that might start dictating to them the way parliament in London dictated to Britain. Rhode Island and Connecticut, whose entire existence depended on their cherished charters and local autonomy, immediately bristled. Maryland's representative politely smiled and said that they'd take it under advisement, which in eighteenth century political language meant no chance. Even Massachusetts, Franklin's old stomping grounds, had doubts. Thomas Hutchinson, sharp as ever, admired the plan's logic, but saw the danger. Our people, he warned, are not fond of giving up their privileges. In the end, every colonial delegation voted it down. And then, just to complete the circle of irony, the plan was sent to London for approval, where the Board of Trade rejected it too. Their reasoning? Well, it gave the colonies too much power. So the colonies thought it was too centralized, and London thought it was too independent. The Albany plan managed to fail in both directions simultaneously. A neat trick that Franklin would later look back on with his usual dry humor. He wrote It is not surprising that the plan was rejected by the assemblies, for the same jealousy of power that hindered the union of the colonies will, in time, make them independent. He didn't know it yet, but he just predicted the next twenty years of American history. From his post in Massachusetts, Governor William Shirley watched these proceedings with both irritation and fascination. Shirley had been one of the loudest voices urging the crown to call for a general conference in the first place. He wanted cooperation, yes, but the right kind of cooperation. Hierarchical, controlled, and unmistakably British. To him, Franklin's plan was too clever by half. It smacked of overreach, colonial assemblies assuming power that properly belonged to the king in Parliament. But Shirley also recognized the problem Franklin was trying to solve. He wrote to his superiors in London that the colony's inability to act jointly was a dangerous weakness, especially with war on the horizon. He supported the idea of a royal directive for unity, but under strict imperial supervision, not self government. And this tension between imperial control and colonial initiative would never go away. Shirley's cautious endorsement and Franklin's ambitious proposal were two sides of the same coin, each reflecting the same anxiety. The Empire needed to function as a single organism, but no one could agree who should control the brain. The Albany Congress adjourned in early July with handshakes, polite letters, and no real progress. The Iroquois Alliance was tenuous, the frontier defenses were still uncoordinated, and the plan of union was a dead letter. But Franklin, ever the optimist, went home with a sense that something important had happened anyway. He glimpsed what a united colonial voice might look like, and how far off it still was. And when war came, as everyone now expected it would, the Empire would discover just how costly that disunity would be. And so after weeks of speeches, wampum belts, long dinners, and longer complaints, the Albany Congress of seventeen fifty four came to a quiet end. There was no triumphant declarations, no new treaties signed, and no certainty of grand councils to herald new age of unity. The delegates packed up their papers, shook hands, and went home, back to their fractious assemblies and defensive forts. In other words, the first major experiment in colonial unity had ended as so many British meetings did, with everyone politely agreeing to disagree and no one actually doing anything. In its immediate goals, the Albany Congress had failed spectacularly. The Iroquois left unimpressed. Their covenant chain with Britain was technically mended, yes, but only with the thinnest of polishes. They saw through the hollow promises, noting that the British delegates could barely agree among themselves, much less coordinate an effective defense. They had come expecting strength. What they saw was confusion wrapped in ceremony. To the Hodenerson, this was an ominous sign, and over the next few years, their once solid alliance with Britain would steadily erode, tribe by tribe, as they reconsidered just how much this distant empire could really protect them. For the colonies, the outcome was no better. Franklin's plan of union was rejected by every assembly that received it. Each legislature was too attached to its own charter, its own taxes, and its own sense of sovereignty. As one contemporary put it, the colonies agree in nothing but their dislike of one another's government. Ouch. Even by the diplomatic standards of the eighteenth century, that was a pretty brutal self assessment. And yet, here's where history has a sense of irony. What looked like failure in 1754 was, in hindsight, something much more significant. Albany was the first serious attempt to create a unified continental policy in North America. It wasn't rebellion, it wasn't revolution, but it was an experiment in what an American identity might look like, if such a thing even existed. For the first time, men like Franklin, Hutchinson, Hopkins, and Johnson sat together, thinking not just as agents of their own colonies, but as members of something larger. They didn't have a word for it yet. The United States would come much later, but the impulse was there, a shared recognition that geography, commerce, and danger bound them together more tightly than tradition or distance kept them apart. Franklin himself later wrote The colonies had the seeds of union in them, but they required a season of distress to bring them forth. And that season of distress was about to arrive, wearing a red coat and carrying a British commission. While the British were debating charters and councils, the French were doing something radical. Winning by default. After Washington's defeat at Fort Necessity, the French effectively controlled the entire Ohio country. They expanded their fortifications, reinforced their native alliances, and prepared for the next phase of the struggle, confident that the British colonies would remain too divided to act. French officers in Montreal and Quebec wrote home smugly that the English were incapable of union. It was, they said, their natural weakness. And in seventeen fifty four, they weren't wrong. Every colony wanted someone else to pay for the forts, the soldiers, and the guns. Every assembly blamed London for inaction, and London, in turn, blamed the colonies for bickering. The result was paralysis, and on the frontier, paralysis meant defeat. That left one obvious solution. If talk and treaties failed, the Empire would have to turn to the one thing it still did very well send an army. London, alarmed by the chain of frontier disasters and the French expansion in the Ohio Valley, decided that a purely colonial response was no longer acceptable. So, in the autumn of seventeen fifty four, orders went out from Whitehall for a major military expedition to America, the first of its kind. A British regular army would march into the wilderness, reclaim the Ohio country, and remind everyone, French and colonial alike, that the Empire still had teeth. The man chosen to lead this force was Major General Edward Braddock, a veteran of European wars, a strict disciplinarian, and, as we'll see, not the most flexible thinker when it came to forests, rivers, or diplomacy. If Albany had been the Empire's conference room, Braddock would be its battering ram. Albany represented all the ideals of cooperation, reason, and dialogue that the Enlightenment had to offer. Braddock's expedition would represent something far more tangible and far more dangerous. The assumption that British military power could solve what political compromise could not. As Franklin later observed with his trademark bite, experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. Praddock, as it happened, would prove a most expensive pupil. So what did Albany actually accomplish? In the short term? Nothing. In the long term, almost everything. It set a precedent for intercolonial cooperation, however flawed. It marked the first real appearance of Benjamin Franklin as a political statesman rather than a provincial celebrity. It reminded London that the colonies were not merely appendages, but semi autonomous societies, each with their own interests and jealousies. And perhaps most importantly, it revealed the cracks in the imperial system, the same cracks that, twenty years later, would widen into open revolution. For now, though, all that lay in the future. The immediate question facing Britain was simpler how to drive the French out of the Ohio Valley and restore its honor after Washington's embarrassing defeat. And to that end, the Empire was about to send over its best and brightest, or at least its most confident. So, to recap, the year was seventeen fifty four, and the British Empire had just tried its hand at something truly radical, getting thirteen bickering colonies to agree on anything. Predictably, it went as well as of herding cats with muskets. On one side you had London, convinced that the colonists were a pack of unruly provincials who needed firmer discipline. On the other, you had the colonists, convinced that London was a distant tone deaf bureaucracy that didn't understand life beyond the reach of the Thames. And in between, the Iroquois, watching it all with the weary patience of someone who's been promised the same thing ten times and received nothing but a few speeches, a handshake, and another symbolic wampum belt. The governor chain was polished, the pipes were smoked, the ale was drunk, and the delegates congratulated themselves on mending relations, which, in British diplomatic terms, means we didn't make it worse, probably. Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin was out there trying to sell his plan of union like a door to door insurance man in buckled shoes, while the other colonies politely slammed the door in his face. Too centralized for them, too independent for London, it was, as Franklin himself might have put it, a plan perfectly designed to satisfy no one. Still, give Franklin credit. He was the only man in the room big enough to imagine what the future might look like, and in a nice bit of historical foreshadowing, his join or die cartoon, yes, that famous snake, would outlive the Albany Congress by becoming one of the most iconic symbols of the American Revolution. So really, Albany's main achievement wasn't the covenant chain, or the speeches, or even the plan itself. Its main achievement was giving Franklin an excuse to invent political memes twenty years ahead of schedule. As for William Shirley, he went home to Massachusetts, still convinced that paperwork and polite diplomacy could hold the Empire together. Thomas Hutchinson returned with his faith in royal authority thoroughly intact, though history will have its fun with him later. Stephen Hopkins went home satisfied that Rhode Island had once again been the smartest colony in the room. And William Johnson, ever the pragmatist, quietly got back to work reinforcing his ties with the Mohawk, because he, more than anyone else, sensed what was coming next. Because even as the delegates were leaving Albany, British regulars were boarding ships in Ireland, their drums and fifes echoing across the harbours. They were coming to America under the command of a man named Edward Braddock, a man who would, in less than a year, learn the hard way that the forests of Pennsylvania do not play by the rules of European warfare. If all bunny was talking Braddock was action. And in our next episode, we'll see just how disastrously that action unfolded. So, come back next time for the history of the Seven Years War, Episode 4, Praddock's March seventeen fifty five. Until then, I'm your host, Rob Hill, and thanks for listening.