Episode Details

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 Albany adopted it. Then it was strangled from both ends at once: the colonial assemblies wouldn’t surrender their power to it, and the Crown wouldn’t allow a colonial union strong enough to need it. This is the story of the first time Americans tried to become one country — and of how the idea, voted down by everyone, refused to die.