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As an illustration of the fact, that the suggestion of some common bond to unite the Colonies for general defence was not due to the agencies which immediately precipitated the American Revolution, it is to be noticed that as early as 1607, William Penn urged the union of the Colonies in some mutually related common support. The Six Nations (Indian), whom the British courted as allies against the French, and later, against their own blood, had already reached a substantial Union among themselves, under the name of the Iroquois Confederacy; and it is a historical fact of great interest, that their constitutional league for mutual support against a common enemy, while reserving absolute independence in every local function or franchise, challenged the appreciative indorsement of Thomas Jefferson when he entered upon the preparation of a Constitution for the United States of America.

And in 1722, Daniel Coxe, of New Jersey, suggested a practical union of the Colonies for the consolidation of interests common to each. In 1754, when the British government formally advised the Colonies to secure the friendship of the Six Nations against the French, Benjamin Franklin prepared a form for such union. Delegates from New England, as well as from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, met at Albany on the fourth of July, 1754, the very day of the surrender of Fort Necessity to the French, for consideration of the suggested plan. The King’s council rejected it, because it conceded too much independence of action to the people of the Colonies, and the Colonies refused to accept its provisions, because it left too much authority with the King.