The Edge of Empire - Each for itself

American Political History · Dec 25, 2022 · 17m

In May 1754, a Philadelphia printer cut a snake into pieces and told his fellow colonists to join, or die. That summer, as the first shots of a world war crackled in the Ohio woods, the colonies were summoned to Albany to repair their fraying alliance with the Iroquois — and an old Mohawk leader named Hendrick stood up and told them the brutal truth about themselves: rich, populous, and “like women, bare and open, without any fortifications.” Benjamin Franklin came with an answer — the Albany Plan of Union, the first real proposal to make the thirteen colonies one government. The men at…