George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

James Alexander, of New York,¹ the same who, with the elder William Smith, had limited the prerogative, by introducing the custom of granting but an annual support, thought that the British parliament should establish the duties for a colonial revenue, which the future American Grand Council, to be composed of deputies from all the provinces, should have no power to diminish. The royalist, Colden, saw no mode of obtaining the necessary funds but by parliamentary taxation; the members of the Grand Council, unless removable by the crown, might become dangerous. The privilege of fixed meetings at. stated times and places, was one which neither the parliament nor the Privy Council enjoyed, and would tend to subvert the constitution. England, he was assured, ‘will, and can, keep its colonies dependent.’ But Franklin looked for greater liberties than such as the British parliament might inaugurate. Having for his motto, ‘Join or die,’ he busied himself in sketching to his friends the outline of a confederacy which should truly represent the whole American people.

Dinwiddie was all the while persevering in his plans at the West. Trent was already there; and Washington, now a lieutenant-colonel, with a regiment of but one hundred and fifty ‘self-willed, ungovernable’ men, was ordered to join him at the fork of the Ohio, ‘to finish the fort already begun there by the Ohio Company;’ and ‘to make prisoners, kill, or destroy all who interrupted the English settlements.’ ²