If you have a textbook or class reading that is guiding
your answering of the question, I would refer to that as the first authority. Your
instructor might be expecting the answer that is there over anything else. I would say
that all of the answers feature a bit of limitation. With this in mind, I think that
the answer for B is probably the one I could most support. Both A and B are very
similar in terms of how the Native American political writings impacted Franklin and
other founding fathers. Yet, based on the contours of the answer prompts, I like B the
most because of chronology. We know that the French and Indian War took place between
1756 and 1763. The colonists actively supported the British in this contest. For his
part, Franklin argued that support of the British and unity amongst all colonists would
be critical. It is for this that his "Join or Die" cartoon was written. He aligned
himself with the English and therefore would not have been supportive of the Native
American cause at the time. There is little to indicate that Franklin and the other
framers were writing against the British rule during the French and Indian War as
dissatisfaction with England began to percolate after it. This rules out letter A, in
my mind. Along those lines would be the argument suggesting that Franklin already
possessed an understanding of the Iroquois ways as early as 1744, when at the Treaty of
Lancaster signing, Franklin was conscious of Native American political
ideals:
Historians including Donald Grinde... have
claimed that the democratic ideals of the Gayanashagowa provided a significant
inspiration to Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and other framers of the United States
Constitution. Franklin circulated copies of the proceedings of the 1744 Treaty of
Lancaster among his fellow colonists; at the close of this document, the Iroquois
leaders offer to impart instruction in their democratic methods of government to the
English.
For this,
I think that B is the best answer.
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