1754
Jumonville Glen - The Spark of a World War
Washington, now a lieutenant colonel, ambushed a French diplomatic party in a western Pennsylvania glen. A French officer was killed - Washington claimed after surrendering - in cold blood. The skirmish lit a fuse that would burn through India, the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Philippines. Horace Walpole later quipped that a volley fired by a young Virginian set the world on fire.
Albany Congress and Franklin's Plan of Union
Seven colonies met with Iroquois sachems in Albany to coordinate frontier defense. Franklin proposed a continental union with a president-general and a grand council. The colonies rejected it as too strong, London rejected it as too democratic. A sketch of America lay on the table, ignored. Franklin published his famous Join or Die cartoon - a snake cut into segments - to argue the case for colonial unity.
Washington Surrenders Fort Necessity
Rain fell through the night and filled his hastily dug trenches. By morning Washington's powder was soaked and his men were drunk on the rum stores. He signed articles of surrender written in French he could not read - admitting, inadvertently, to Jumonville's murder. His only surrender ever. He marched his surviving men home to Virginia, humiliated but alive, and spent the winter learning from his mistakes.
King's College Founded in New York
By royal charter on the edge of Manhattan, a small Anglican college opened with eight students. Renamed Columbia after independence, it would graduate Hamilton, Jay, and Gouverneur Morris - the men who drafted a republic. For now it was a drafty house facing the common. Its first classes met in the vestry of Trinity Church, in the shadow of the steeple that still stands on lower Broadway.
Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of the Will
The Massachusetts Calvinist, deposed from his Northampton pulpit and ministering on the frontier, published one of Anglo-America's most formidable works of theology - defending predestination with a rigor that would reach Princeton and beyond. He would be appointed the college's president, arrive in January, and die of a smallpox inoculation by March.