Join or Die Patch

“Join or Die” is a well known political cartoon, created by Benjamin Franklin and first published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. It shows a snake severed into eighths, with each segment labeled with the initials of a British American colony or region. New England was represented as one segment, rather than the four colonies it was at that time. Delaware and Georgia were omitted. Therefore it has 8 segments of a snake rather than the traditional 13 colonies. The cartoon apperared along Franklin’s editorial about the “disunited state” of the colonies and the importance of colonial unity.