Join, or Die America’s First Call for Unity
Introduction
The idea of independence didn’t begin with a flag or a declaration. It didn’t start with Boston Harbor or Bunker Hill. And it certainly didn’t begin with a snake. It began slowly- across scattered colonies, in courtrooms, pulpits, trading ports, and family farms. For decades, colonists negotiated with and resisted imperial power, fought wars on the frontier, and debated their rights as British subjects. But these were regional experiences, not yet a unified vision. There was no shared visual language. No collective face. Then came a cartoon. In 1754, in the Pennsylvania Gazette, a crude woodcut appeared- showing a snake, chopped into eight labeled segments, above the phrase: “Join, or Die.”
Drawn by Benjamin Franklin, it was America’s first symbolic call to unity- and it would outlive its original context by generations. That’s why it opens the mural. Not because it was the first act of resistance. But because it was the first image to ask the colonies to see themselves as one body. “Join, or Die” in the Mural In the 250th Anniversary Mural, the cartoon doesn’t shout. It waits- coiled in a corner, near the first murmurs of political alliance. It rests beside ink wells and correspondence, close to the founding committees that began connecting colonies by letter. Its presence is quiet, but pointed.
The snake, segmented, hovers in stasis- neither alive nor fully dead. Unity has not yet occurred. But the idea has arrived. Franklin’s Cartoon and the Albany Plan The image was created during the Albany Congress of 1754, where Franklin proposed the Albany Plan of Union- a framework to unite the colonies for common defense against French and Indigenous forces during the French and Indian War. The plan failed. Most colonies rejected it. But the image succeeded. It bypassed bureaucracies. It moved through taverns and print shops. And even though the cartoon’s original message was about military defense- not independence- it planted something deeper: the idea that the colonies were parts of a living whole. Each labeled segment- NE, NY, NJ, PA, and so on- was a piece of a severed creature. The meaning was visceral: survival required unity. The Snake Lives On In the years that followed, colonial conflict shifted. By the 1760s, the threat was no longer French incursion. It was British overreach.
When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, colonial resistance reignited the symbol. The snake reemerged- not as a call for coordinated defense, but as a visual protest. Pamphlets, flags, and posters revived the image. And by the time of the Revolution, the serpent had become something else entirely: a national emblem of defiance. Its later incarnation- coiled and warning- appeared on the Gadsden Flag, bearing the words “Don’t Tread on Me.” But the DNA of that image began here, with Franklin’s segmented cartoon. The First Image of “Us” “Join, or Die” wasn’t art. It wasn’t elegant. But it was the first time the colonies were asked to see themselves not just as a collection of regions- but as a single vulnerable organism. It communicated what words couldn’t: We’re separate. And if we stay that way, we won’t survive.
This was the beginning of symbolic unity in American life. The cartoon offered a shared visual grammar, a sense of geographic identity, and a message powerful enough to outlast its original context. That’s what made it revolutionary. Why It Still Matters Today, the image lives on. It appears in textbooks, political commentary, even modern protest design. Not because people remember the Albany Congress- but because they recognize the snake. Its shape still carries tension. It still asks a question: What happens if we stay divided? And that’s why it begins the mural’s sequence. Not because it started the war- but because it started a visual tradition of unity that every act of independence would draw from.
Further Reading / Explore More
Explore the mural’s Seeds of Revolution vignette to see how early imagery and correspondence laid the foundation for collective identity. The “Join, or Die” cartoon is positioned near Franklin’s presence- one of the few individuals to appear more than once in the mural, reminding us that ideas don’t arrive whole. They evolve.
Related Blog: Liberty in Type: How Revolutionary Newspapers Framed the Fight for Freedom Mural Link: https://usa250thanniversarymural.com Tags: Join or Die, Benjamin Franklin, Albany Plan of Union, Revolutionary Symbols, Colonial Newspapers, American Unity, Gadsden Flag, Early American Imagery, 250 Mural, Seeds of Revolution
