What Proposal Sought to Unite the Colonies Against the French?
Benjamin Franklin's warning to the British colonies in America: "JOIN, or Die."
The Library of Congress
Anyone on social media knows the power of memes to drive dwelling house an argument and influence others' views. But the tactic of using a viral epitome to persuade people goes back to long before the existence of the Internet or Facebook. One of its earliest practitioners was American founding begetter Benjamin Franklin who, in 1754, published a cartoon, "Join or Die," depicting a snake severed into pieces that symbolized the American colonies.
Franklin'due south goal was to unite the colonists to combat the French and their Native American allies, and to convince the British authorities to support a unified colonial government in America. He didn't achieve that goal, but the image was and so powerful and persuasive that information technology took on a life of its own. A few years after, in the prelude to the Revolutionary War, colonists repurposed it as a symbol of their unity against British rule.
The Cartoon Was a Warning During the French and Indian War
The story of the offset viral image in American political history began in May 1754, when Franklin, so the publisher of a newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette, sought to drum upwardly support for a unified colonial government. He wrote an impassioned editorial, in which he warned of hordes of French intruders converging on the western borderland in Ohio.
"Many more than French are expected from Canada," he wrote. "The Design existence to establish themselves, settle their Indians, and build Forts just on the Back of our Settlements in all our Colonies; from which Forts, as they did from Crown-Point, they may send out their Parties to kill and scalp the Inhabitants, and ruin the Frontier Counties."
Merely if that horrific scenario weren't plenty to motivate his readers, Franklin also illustrated it with what he called an "emblem"—a woodcut of a ophidian cutting into sections, with the caption "Bring together or Die." The identity of the actual artist who created the image isn't known, only the concept may accept been inspired by an illustration in a book published in France in 1685, which showed a snake cut in ii with the slogan, se rejoindre ou mourir ("will join or dice"). Additionally, the severed snake image may have drawn upon folklore of the time, which included the belief that a snake cut into pieces could come up dorsum to life, if its various parts were reunited earlier sunset.
The serpent was a potent symbol with more than positive connotations to the colonists than information technology might carry today, according to Donald C. Dewey, writer of the 2007 book, The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons. "Snakes meant regeneration and renewal, because they shed their skins," he explains.
The 'Join or Die' Snake Had Many Symbols
Every bit University of Kansas special collections librarian, Karen Severud Cook, wrote in a 1996 article in the British Library Journal, the serpent also may have intended to evoke a map, with undulations that "propose the curving shape of the eastern seacoast of Northward America, even if one could non superimpose the cartoon on a map and lucifer the shapes precisely."
Gyre to Continue
Oddly, though, the snake was cut into eight pieces, rather than 13. The head of the snake was labeled "N.E.," signifying the iv New England colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Isle, which Franklin combined to emphasize the importance of unity. Other pieces were marked to signify New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, N Carolina, and South Carolina. Delaware, which shared a governor with Pennsylvania, and Georgia, a newer colony that Franklin didn't recall could contribute much to colonial defense, were left out.
Franklin'southward cartoon had some other reward. "Literacy was non high in that day," Dewey notes, and so the drawing and its message provided a style to reach colonists who might non have been able to read his editorial.
Franklin published the image with a specific political objective in listen. At the time, he was preparing to join other colonial leaders at the Albany Congress, a meeting called to talk over how they should deal with the growing military threat from the French and their Native American allies. Franklin thought that the colonies needed to join together in a strong alliance. He proposed a unified colonial government that could levy taxes and form a military, governed by a council of representatives from each of the colonies and headed by a President General appointed by the British monarch.
The Prototype Backfires in England
Franklin's entrada of persuasion got a boost when the severed snake cartoon was soon reprinted by more than half a dozen other colonial newspapers. But he apparently wanted to reach another influential audience besides on the other side of the Atlantic. Since he didn't have Twitter or Instagram at his disposal, he mailed a copy of the cartoon in 1754, along with his editorial, to Richard Partridge, a Quaker merchant who acted as colonial Pennsylvania's agent in London.
"With this I send you a Paragraph of News from our Gazette, with an Keepsake printed therewith, which it may be well enough to become inserted in some of your about publick Papers," Franklin wrote to Partridge.
In retrospect, that may non have been the wisest move. According to Lester C. Olson, a professor of advice at the University of Pittsburgh and author of the 2004 book, Benjamin Franklin's Vision of American Community: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology, the severed serpent image may actually have backfired, because British politicians saw the colonial unity that it promoted as a potential threat to their control. Even though Franklin's programme was approved by the Albany Congress, the British Parliament rejected it, and instead the British sent their ain army to fight in the disharmonize that would become known as the French and Indian War.
The Cartoon is Adopted for the Revolutionary War
Only even though "Bring together or Die" failed to achieve its real purpose, information technology may take had a much larger unintended touch on. Franklin'south cartoon fabricated such a powerful impression on Americans that it took on a life of its own.
A decade after it originally was published, colonists protesting Bang-up United kingdom's enacting of the Postage stamp Act resurrected the severed ophidian as a symbol of their want to unify in opposition to unfair taxation. In 1774, Paul Revere used a version of it in the masthead of The Massachusetts Spy newspaper, as did several other colonial newspapers that promoted the developing rebellion confronting British rule. Today, it remains one of the most famous political cartoons always published.
But two copies of the edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette with the cartoon still exist. One is held by the Library of Congress, while the other resurfaced in a 2008 auction, where a collector purchased it for $50,000.
Source: https://www.history.com/news/ben-franklin-join-or-die-cartoon-french-indian-war
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