It is most unlikely that Franklin suspected any wrong being perpetrated on the Indians. During the Albany conference he presented to his fellow commissioners a plan which had its inspiration from Six Nations. If the Iroquois tribes could work together harmoniously, why should the American colonies, allegedly civilized, always be quarreling? Accordingly, he proposed they form a confederacy under a single president-general appointed by the Crown. The commissioners approved wholeheartedly but that was as far as he got. When his plan was presented to the assemblies of the various colonies, it was rejected as being too dictatorial. The Crown opposed it as being too democratic. In a final effort to make his point he published in the _Gazette_ America’s first cartoon, a drawing of a snake chopped in eight pieces, each marked with the initials of different colonies. “Join or Die” read the caption. But he was several years in advance of the times. Even while the Albany conference was under way, seven hundred French soldiers and Indians forced the surrender of Fort Necessity, a small barricade fifty miles from Wills Creek, held by George Washington, now a colonel, and a scant 400 men. The nine-year French and Indian Wars were unofficially under way. In December, six months later, General Edward Braddock landed in Virginia with two regiments of British regulars. They had come to take the French Fort Duquesne, located on the forks of the Ohio (where Pittsburgh now stands). The Pennsylvania Assembly sent Franklin to meet the general at Frederickstown and offer his services as postmaster. Franklin with his son William spent several days with Braddock. He found the general a master of European military strategy but more than a little arrogant. “After taking Fort Duquesne,” Braddock announced one night at dinner, “I will proceed to Niagara; and, having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time; and I suppose it will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days.” In his mind, Franklin pictured the long line of Braddock’s army marching along a narrow road cut through thick woods and bushes, and he was uneasy. He was sure, he told the general, that there would be scant resistance at Duquesne, if he arrived there. The danger would be Indian ambush on the way. Braddock smiled patronizingly. “These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia, but upon the king’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.”