Representatives met daily at the City Hall (Dutch: Stadt Huys) in Albany, New York, from June 19 to July 11, 1754, to discuss better relations with the Native American tribes and common defensive measures against the French threat from Canada in the opening stage of the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France.

Delegates did not have the goal of creating an American nation; rather, they were colonists with the more limited mission of pursuing a treaty with the Mohawks and other major Iroquois tribes.

Jacob Leisler summoned an intercolonial congress which met in New York on May 1, 1690 to plan concerted action against the French and Indians,[2] but he attracted only the colonies as far south as Maryland.

For the Colonies, if so united, would have really been, as they then thought themselves, sufficient to their own Defence, and being trusted with it, as by the Plan, an Army from Britain, for that purpose would have been unnecessary: The Pretences for framing the Stamp-Act would not then have existed, nor the other Projects for drawing a Revenue from America to Britain by Acts of Parliament, which were the Cause of the Breach, and attended with such terrible Expence of Blood and Treasure: so that the different Parts of the Empire might still have remained in Peace and Union.The Congress and its Albany Plan have achieved iconic status as presaging the formation of the United States of America in 1776.

The colonial assemblies rejected the plan, although delegates forming the government after the Revolution incorporated some features in the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

Twenty-one representatives attended the Congress from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire.