FRANKLIN'S PLAN OF UNION.--One of the delegates was Benjamin Franklin. In his newspaper, the _Philadelphia Gazette_, he had urged union, and he had put this device [2] at the top of an account of the capture of the Ohio fort (afterward Duquesne) by the French. At the convention he submitted a plan of union calling for a president general and a grand council of representatives from the colonies to meet each year. They were to make treaties with the Indians, regulate the affairs of the colonies as a whole, levy taxes, build forts, and raise armies. The convention adopted the plan, but both the colonial legislatures and the Lords of Trade in London rejected it. [3] [Illustration: FRANKLIN, AT THE AGE OF 70.] THE FIVE POINTS OF ATTACK.--The French held five strongholds, which shut the British out of New France and Louisiana, and threatened the English colonies. 1. Louisburg threatened New England and Nova Scotia. 2. Quebec controlled the St. Lawrence. 3. Crown Point (and later Ticonderoga), on Lake Champlain, guarded the water route to New York and threatened the Hudson valley. 4. Niagara guarded the portage between Lakes Ontario and Erie, and threatened New York on the west. 5. Fort Duquesne controlled the Ohio and threatened Pennsylvania and Virginia. The plan of the British was to strengthen their hold on Nova Scotia (Acadia), and to attack three of the French strongholds--Crown Point, Niagara, and Fort Duquesne--at the same time. ACADIA.--Late in May, 1755, therefore, an expedition set sail from Boston, made its way up the Bay of Fundy, captured the French forts at the head of that bay, reduced all Acadia to British rule, and tendered the oath of allegiance to the French Acadians. This they refused to take, whereupon they were driven on board ships at the point of the bayonet and carried off and distributed among the colonies. [4] [Illustration: FORTS IN NORTHERN NEW YORK.] CROWN POINT.--The army against Crown Point, composed of troops from the four New England colonies and New York, gathered at Albany, and Forts in northern New York, under command of William Johnson [5] marched to the head of Lake George, where it beat the French under Dieskau (dees'kou), and built Fort William Henry; but it did not reach Crown Point. NIAGARA.--A third army, under General Shirley of Massachusetts, likewise set out from Albany, and pushing across New York reached Oswego, when all thought of attacking Niagara was abandoned. News had come of the crushing defeat of Braddock.