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 coöperation. 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 coöperated 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