Join, or Die

Join, or Die is a woodcut political cartoon created by Benjamin Franklin and published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754, during the French and Indian War. It shows a snake cut into eight pieces, each piece labeled for a colonial region, with New England shown as a single segment and Delaware and Georgia left out entirely. The image drew on the old folk belief that a severed snake could come back to life if its pieces were rejoined before sunset, using that image to argue for colonial unity. Decades later the same woodcut was revived as a rallying image for the American Revolution, and it is considered the earliest known pictorial appeal for colonial union made by an American-born colonist. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/