When the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 startled the American
colonies out of their provincial sense of security and made them
aware of their real attitude toward the mother country, Franklin
was in London. Eleven years earlier, in 1754, he had offered a
plan for the "Union of the Colonies," but this had not
contemplated separation from England. It was rather what we
should call a scheme for imperial federation under the British
Crown. We may use his word union, however, in a different field
from that of politics. How much union of sentiment, of mental and
moral life, of literary, educational, and scientific endeavor,
was there in the colonies when the hour of self-examination came?
Only the briefest summary may be attempted here. As to race,
these men of the third and fourth generation since the planting
of the colonies were by no means so purely English as the first
settlers. The 1,600,000 colonists in 1760 were mingled of many
stocks, the largest non-English elements being German and
Scotch-Irish--that is, Scotch who had settled for a while in
Ulster before emigrating to America.
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