This Week's Story
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Can the 13 Colonies work together as Benjamin Franklin helps them build a postal system?
This Week’s Story relives American history and the Bible through brief inspiring stories presented on mp3 audio recordings and text for reading.
Yes! Possible Solutions!
part seven
How can the fifty states of the United States be a united nation with diversity and shared vision? The challenge was obvious and disturbing in the 2024 state and federal elections. Because of their disagreements about issues and people running for offices, Americans struggled to talk about their voting questions and choices with people they saw daily. Before the United States became a nation, it confronted the dilemma of how to have diversity with unity and shared vision.
When Benjamin Franklin became a joint postmaster general in the 13 Colonies, he received a tremendous opportunity! He could be a key strategist in building unity between the 13 Colonies before they became the United States of America. By the end of 1753 all 13 colonies belonged to Britain. They had no experience working together to solve common needs.
In the 175O’s Benjamin was well known in Philadelphia. He had organized the first fire department, reorganized the first police force, served on Philadelphia’s City Council and Pennsylvania’s Assembly, and helped develop the University of Pennsylvania.
Now his influence would spread; his ideas about unity would spread; and his knowledge of the 13 Colonies would greatly increase.
As postmaster general of the colonies Benjamin considered how the postal services should operate. He developed the first regular mail deliveries. He visited all the northern offices and installed a better accounting system, new routes, more frequent deliveries, and chose the roads and ferries to be used. He started the penny post for people who wanted their letters delivered to them, instead of at a post office.
Previous to Franklin’s improvements to the postal system, sending mail in the 13 Colonies was so undependable that people often were too discouraged to use a mail post.
Franklin’s mind was never idle. He knew that the 13 Colonies had many similar problems, yet each functioned separately and was concerned about its own rights and powers. In 1751 he had outlined a plan for the colonies to work on defense problems. He knew about the Six Nations Federation of American Indians, sometimes called the Iroquois Confederacy. For centuries it was a powerful example of a political confederacy. He wrote that it would be strange if a similar union “should be impractical for ten or a dozen English colonies to whom it is more necessary.”
Franklin’s plan recognized that working with the governors of the colony assemblies was unwise, because they were appointed by the British crown. They were not trusted by the American assemblymen. Franklin’s suggestion was: “pick out half a dozen men of good understanding …, and furnish them with a reasonable scheme and proper instructions and send them in the nature of ambassadors to other colonies, where they might apply particularly to all the leading men and by proper management get them to engage in promoting the scheme.”
In 1754 representatives of six colonies met to discuss defense. It was the first time that several colonies met to plan unified action, a foreshadowing of the American Revolutionary War.
Please join Barbara, Todd, and I, Carlos, soon for part seven.
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