THE EFFECTS OF WARFARE ON THE COLONIES

The various wars with the French and the Indians, trivial in detail as they seem to-day, had a profound influence on colonial life and on the destiny of America.  Circumstances beyond the control of popular assemblies, jealous of their individual powers, compelled cooeperation among them, grudging and stingy no doubt, but still cooeperation.  The American people, more eager to be busy in their fields or at their trades, were simply forced to raise and support armies, to learn the arts of warfare, and to practice, if in a small theater, the science of statecraft.  These forces, all cumulative, drove the colonists, so tenaciously provincial in their habits, in the direction of nationalism.

=The New England Confederation.=—­It was in their efforts to deal with the problems presented by the Indian and French menace that the Americans took the first steps toward union.  Though there were many common ties among the settlers of New England, it required a deadly fear of the Indians to produce in 1643 the New England Confederation, composed of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven.  The colonies so united were bound together in “a firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offense and defense, mutual service and succor, upon all just occasions.”  They made provision for distributing the burdens of wars among the members and provided for a congress of commissioners from each colony to determine upon common policies.  For some twenty years the Confederation was active and it continued to hold meetings until after the extinction of the Indian peril on the immediate border.

Virginia, no less than Massachusetts, was aware of the importance of intercolonial cooeperation.  In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Old Dominion began treaties of commerce and amity with New York and the colonies of New England.  In 1684 delegates from Virginia met at Albany with the agents of New York and Massachusetts to discuss problems of mutual defense.  A few years later the Old Dominion cooeperated loyally with the Carolinas in defending their borders against Indian forays.

=The Albany Plan of Union.=—­An attempt at a general colonial union was made in 1754.  On the suggestion of the Lords of Trade in England, a conference was held at Albany to consider Indian relations, to devise measures of defense against the French, and to enter into “articles of union and confederation for the general defense of his Majesty’s subjects and interests in North America as well in time of peace as of war.”  New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were represented.  After a long discussion, a plan of union, drafted mainly, it seems, by Benjamin Franklin, was adopted and sent to the colonies and the crown for approval.  The colonies, jealous of their individual rights, refused