Benjamin Franklin sat on the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1755. Gauging the panic that was spreading throughout the province, he had strongly urged Governor Morris and his fellow assemblymen that military force was necessary in the face of the Native American threat. On November 25, the same day the settlers' corpses were left on their doorstep, the Assembly acquiesced to Franklin's proposal for an unpaid volunteer force and passed Pennsylvania's first Militia Act. Two days later, a defense fund was created by a compromise hammered out by Franklin and fellow Assemblyman Joseph Galloway; it allowed for the taxing of colonists but exempted William Penn's sons and their land in exchange for a contribution from them. By early 1756, construction was underway on a chain of frontier forts, including Fort Augusta in the northern Susquehanna Valley, that ran along the Blue Mountains from the Delaware River to the Maryland line.