“Join, or Die”: Franklin’s Snake and the Road to the Gadsden Flag

Before there was “Don’t Tread On Me,” there was “Join, or Die.” Benjamin Franklin’s 1754 woodcut of a snake cut into pieces is often called America’s first political cartoon. It made the snake a symbol of the colonies two decades before the Revolution. This page covers what the cartoon shows, why Franklin made it, the folk belief behind it, how Patriots revived it in 1765 and 1774, and how it led to the Gadsden flag.

What the Cartoon Shows

“Join, or Die” is a small woodcut of a snake cut into eight pieces, with the words “JOIN, or DIE.” beneath it. The Library of Congress catalog lists the labels on the segments as “S.C., N.C., V., M., P., N.J., N.Y., [and] N.E.”: South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. The head is New England and the tail is South Carolina, roughly following the order of the coast.

Not all thirteen colonies appear. New England’s four colonies share one segment, Delaware was then governed with Pennsylvania, and Georgia is left out entirely.

Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, May 9, 1754

The cartoon appeared in Franklin’s newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette of Philadelphia, on May 9, 1754, a date also recorded by the Library of Congress. It is attributed to Franklin. Wikipedia calls it the earliest known picture of colonial union made by an American colonist, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service calls it the first political cartoon published in an American newspaper.

It ran with Franklin’s report on the growing French threat on the frontier, which blamed the colonies’ weakness on their divisions:

“The Confidence of the French in this Undertaking seems well-grounded on the present disunited state of the British Colonies, and the extreme difficulty of bringing so many different Governments and Assemblies to agree in any speedy and effectual Measures for our common defense and Security; while our Enemies have the very great Advantage of being under one Direction, with one Council, and one Purse.”

The French and Indian War and the Albany Congress

In 1754, Britain and France were sliding into the French and Indian War, the North American part of the Seven Years’ War. The colonies argued over whether and how to resist French expansion west of the Appalachians. That summer, delegates from several colonies met at the Albany Congress, where Franklin proposed the Albany Plan of Union, a single council for colonial defense and Indian relations. His cartoon made the case visually: without union, each colony would be picked off on its own. The colonial assemblies did not adopt the Albany Plan, but the image outlasted it.

The Segmented Snake Myth

The cartoon draws on a popular superstition: that a snake cut into pieces could come back to life if the pieces were rejoined before sunset. For 18th-century readers the message was clear. The colonies were the scattered pieces, and only by joining together could they survive.

Franklin may also have borrowed from an older emblem. Wikipedia notes that French designer Nicolas Verrien’s 1685 emblem book included a snake cut in two with the motto “Se rejoindre ou mourir,” or “join or die.” That suggests the device was already part of European emblem tradition.

Revival in 1765: The Stamp Act

A decade later the cartoon took on a new meaning. During the Stamp Act crisis of 1765–1766, colonists protesting Parliament reprinted it, notably in The Constitutional Courant, to urge unity against Britain rather than against France. Variations appeared in New York and Massachusetts, and later in Virginia and South Carolina. In some places the motto became “Unite, or Die.”

Franklin himself did not endorse this use. Wikipedia notes that he favored a more moderate course at the time, and in 1766 published a different cartoon, MAGNA Britannia: her Colonies REDUCED, warning Britain of what it would lose by alienating the colonies. Loyalists, meanwhile, read the serpent in its biblical sense, as a symbol of guile and treachery.

Revival in 1774: Paul Revere and the Massachusetts Spy

On July 7, 1774, Paul Revere adapted the snake for the masthead of Isaiah Thomas’s Boston newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, where it was shown facing a British griffin. By then the image stood squarely for colonial resistance to Parliament and the Crown.

From “Join, or Die” to “Don’t Tread On Me”

The Gadsden flag is the next step in the same symbolic story. Within a year of Revere’s masthead, the snake was whole again, a single rattlesnake whose thirteen rattles stood for the united colonies. The U.S. Navy’s Naval History and Heritage Command sums up the shift: the rattlesnake “emerged as a symbol of the English colonies of North America about the time of the Seven Years War, when it appeared in newspaper prints with the motto ‘Join or Die,’” and by the War of Independence it was “frequently used in conjunction with the motto ‘Don’t Tread on Me.’”

The message changed with the image. “Join, or Die” warned the colonies: unite or perish. “Don’t Tread On Me” warned their enemies: we are united now, so leave us alone. Franklin’s 1775 “American Guesser” letter made the link explicit when it noted that one rattle alone makes no sound, “but the ringing of thirteen together, is sufficient to alarm the boldest man living.” Read more in our guide to what “Don’t Tread On Me” means. The two symbols even appeared together: the NHHC quotes a 1778 account of an American privateer flying a pine tree flag with a snake cut into thirteen pieces and the motto “Join or Die.”

The snake also went to sea on the striped rattlesnake jack. See First Navy Jack vs. Gadsden flag.

Legacy

“Join, or Die” has been redrawn throughout American history. Wikipedia notes that both the Union and the Confederacy used versions of it during the Civil War, and it remains a common image in politics and pop culture today. It also appears as a tattoo on public figures such as comedian Craig Ferguson. Browse snake-themed flags and gear at the Our Gadsden Flag store.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who created “Join, or Die”?

It is attributed to Benjamin Franklin and was first published in his Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia on May 9, 1754.

What does “Join, or Die” mean?

It urged the British colonies to unite for their common defense during the French and Indian War. The cut-up snake represented the divided colonies, which could only survive if joined together.

Why is the snake in eight pieces instead of thirteen?

New England’s colonies share one segment, Delaware was then part of Pennsylvania’s government, and Georgia was left out, so the snake has eight labeled segments.

What superstition is the cartoon based on?

A popular belief held that a snake cut into pieces would come back to life if the pieces were rejoined before sunset.

Is “Join, or Die” the same as the Gadsden flag?

No. “Join, or Die” is a 1754 cartoon of a segmented snake. The Gadsden flag of 1775–76 shows a single coiled rattlesnake on yellow with the motto “Don’t Tread On Me.” The flag grew out of the same colonial snake symbolism.

Was “Join, or Die” used in the American Revolution?

Yes. Colonists revived it during the Stamp Act crisis of 1765–66, and Paul Revere put it on the Massachusetts Spy masthead in 1774.

Sources

Library of Congress, “Join, or die” (catalog record, 1754 May 9). https://www.loc.gov/item/2002695523/
Wikipedia, “Join, or Die.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join,_or_Die
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, “Don’t Tread on Me.” https://www.fws.gov/story/dont-tread-me
Naval History and Heritage Command, “The U.S. Navy’s Jack.” https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/heritage/banners/usnavy-jack.html
“The Rattlesnake as a Symbol of America” (“An American Guesser,” 1775), transcription. https://greatseal.com/symbols/rattlesnake.html
Wikipedia, “Gadsden flag.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsden_flag