Who created the 1754 political cartoon Join, or Die, urging colonial unity?

Benjamin Franklin created the 1754 political cartoon Join, or Die, urging colonial unity.

Franklin published the woodcut in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754, during the French and Indian War. It showed a snake cut into sections, with each section labeled for a British American colony or region. The image accompanied Franklin’s argument that the colonies needed to cooperate against French and Indigenous military threats.

The original cartoon represented eight sections and did not include every one of the thirteen colonies. Its famous slogan warned that the colonies were stronger together than separately. Franklin adapted an older European association between divided snakes and political unity to fit North American circumstances.

During the American Revolution, colonists reused the image and slogan with a new meaning: unity against British rule. It later became one of the best-known symbols of intercolonial cooperation. The cartoon is sometimes mistakenly treated as an original Revolutionary War image, but it first appeared two decades earlier.