Benjamin Franklin’s famous cartoon was not actually drawn with the intention to unite Americans against the British. It was intended to unite all settlers, without drawing distinctions between British and American, against the French and the Indians. The colonists were deeply divided over war for the lands west of the Appalachian mountains, with some viewing it as a territorial squabble while others saw it in terms of an apocalyptic defense of the Protestant faith against the encroachment of the Pope. All this made Benjamin fear would be their downfall against a united French-Indian front.

On this day, May 9, 1754 Franklin first published his cartoon, of a 13-piece segmented snake, representing the 13 colonies, with the caption “Join or Die”. Franklin’s choice of a snake alluded to the common superstition that snakes cut apart would come back to life if their pieces were put back together before sunset.

Franklin’s cartoon warned that as the snake, the 13 colonies were in mortal danger, and needed to join up before the “sunset” of the French and Indian advance. It was picked up and popularized by numerous other publications, and became somewhat of a rallying cry. Ironically, France’s defeat in the French and Indian Wars secured the American western border, and the same notion of a union was taken up again against Britain by an America that no longer needed the mother country’s protection.