Which Benjamin Franklin cartoon showed a cut-up snake urging colonial unity?

Benjamin Franklin’s cut-up-snake cartoon urging colonial unity was titled Join, or Die.

Franklin published the image in the Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754, as the French and Indian War began. The woodcut showed a snake divided into segments labeled with colonial initials, accompanying Franklin’s argument that the colonies were dangerously disunited.

The original image contained eight segments rather than thirteen. New England was represented as one section, Delaware was included with Pennsylvania, and Georgia was omitted. The cartoon therefore reflected political groupings of the time, not a literal map of all thirteen colonies.

In 1754, “Join, or Die” urged cooperation against France and for managing Indigenous affairs. During the later Stamp Act crisis and American Revolution, colonists reused the image as a broader symbol of resistance to British rule. It is sometimes confused with later patriotic cartoons, but this snake image is specifically Franklin’s.