[Sidenote: The New England confederacy (1643-84).] [Sidenote: Albany Congress(1754).] [Sidenote: Stamp Act Congress (1765).] Confederations among states have generally owed their origin, in the first instance, to military necessities. The earliest league in America, among white people at least, was the confederacy of New England colonies formed in 1643, chiefly for defence against the Indians. It was finally dissolved amid the troubles of 1684, when the first government of Massachusetts was overthrown. Along the Atlantic coast the northern and the southern colonies were for some time distinct groups, separated by the unsettled portion of the central zone. The settlement of Pennsylvania, beginning in 1681, filled this gap and made the colonies continuous from the French frontier of Canada to the Spanish frontier of Florida. The danger from France began to be clearly apprehended after 1689, and in 1698 one of the earliest plans of union was proposed by William Penn. In 1754, just as the final struggle with France was about to begin, there came Franklin's famous plan for a permanent federal union; and this plan was laid before a congress assembled at Albany for renewing the alliances with the Six Nations.[1] Only seven colonies were represented in this congress. Observe the word "congress." If it had been a legislative body it would more likely have been called a "parliament." But of course it was nothing of the sort. It was a diplomatic body, composed of delegates representing state governments, like European congresses,--like the Congress of Berlin, for example, which tried to adjust the Eastern Question in 1878. Eleven years after the Albany Congress, upon the news that parliament had passed the Stamp Act, a congress of nine colonies assembled at New York in October, 1765, to take action thereon. [Footnote 1: Franklin's plan was afterward submitted to the several legislatures of the colonies, and was everywhere rejected because the need for union was nowhere strongly felt by the people.]