=Why the Task was Difficult.=—The thirteen colonies were founded independently. Some of them grew out of trading-company operations. Others were founded by men and women who left their homes in the old country to escape religious persecution. Others, again, owed their beginnings to wealthy men who obtained large grants of land from the English crown in order to establish settlements. Founded in different ways, these various colonies had from the outset very little community of interest. Each had its own government and these governments differed somewhat from one another. The people did not travel about from one colony to another, for transportation was crude and traveling was difficult. From Massachusetts to Georgia seemed a much longer distance in 1787 than a journey across the entire continent seems today. Each colony, moreover, was primarily interested in its own problems and gave little thought to outside affairs except when dangers threatened. It is true that the colonies also had some things in common, but the forces which tended to keep them apart were far stronger than those which tended to bring them together. [Sidenote: Early attempts at federation.] For this reason the first attempts at union resulted in no permanent federation. As early as 1643 the four principal New England settlements united themselves into a league of friendship known as the New England Federation, but this union went out of existence after the danger of Indian attacks had passed away. William Penn, in 1696, proposed a general union of all the colonies but nothing came of his suggestion. At various times during the next sixty years conferences were called and the matter discussed, the most important being the Albany Congress of 1754, at which a plan of union was framed in detail. Local jealousies, however, always proved too strong until the impending quarrel with the mother country showed the necessity of united action. [Sidenote: The Revolution as a unifying force.] =How the War paved the Way for Union.=—The attempt of the English government to tax the colonies without their consent brought home to them, for the first time, the fact that they were all in the same boat. If they should attempt to resist these taxes individually, they would be coerced one by one. For this reason they hastened to consult with one another and in due course sent delegates to a Continental Congress which handled the common interests of the colonies during the war. The stress and strain of the war made unity essential for the time being, but it did not produce an organic union. The colonies were united in declaring their independence, but this declaration did not create a union of new states.