You’ve seen it on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and probably a few historical plaques. A snake chopped into eight pieces, each labeled with the initials of a colony. It looks tough. It looks aggressive. It’s the ultimate "don't mess with us" vibe. But if you're asking who made the join or die snake, the answer takes us back to a woodcut workshop in Philadelphia in May 1754.
Benjamin Franklin did it.
He didn’t just write the Pennsylvania Gazette; he was a master of what we’d now call branding. At the time, the American colonies were a mess of bickering mini-states. They couldn't agree on taxes, borders, or how to handle the French and Indian War. Franklin realized that if they didn't figure out a way to work together, they were basically doomed. So, he sat down and carved—literally carved into a woodblock—the image of a timber rattlesnake.
The Panic Behind the Print
It’s easy to look at history through a dusty lens, but 1754 was a time of genuine anxiety. The French were moving into the Ohio Valley. The British weren't providing enough support. The colonies were isolated. Franklin wasn't just being "artistic." He was trying to scare people into cooperation.
The image appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. It was the first political cartoon in an American newspaper. Think about that. Before Franklin, news was just blocks of dry text. He changed the game by giving people a visual they could understand in three seconds.
The snake is sliced into eight parts: NE (New England), NY, NJ, P, M, V, NC, and SC. You might notice Georgia is missing. Delaware is tucked in with Pennsylvania. New England is lumped together. Why? Because Franklin wanted clarity over geographic perfection. He needed the message to be blunt.
Why a Snake?
Honestly, the choice of a rattlesnake was a stroke of genius. In the 18th century, Europeans often mocked America as a wilderness full of pests. Franklin took that insult and flipped it. He argued that the rattlesnake was a uniquely American creature—brave, it never attacks without giving fair warning, and its rattles get louder the more you provoke it.
📖 Related: The Galveston Hurricane 1900 Orphanage Story Is More Tragic Than You Realized
There was also a popular superstition at the time. People actually believed that if you took a dead snake that had been cut up and put the pieces back together before sunset, the snake would come back to life.
Franklin was leaning into that weird folk logic. He was telling the colonies: "You're dead right now. But if you pull it together before the sun goes down, you'll be a monster."
It Wasn't About the British (At First)
This is where most people get the history wrong. We associate the Join or Die snake with the American Revolution. We think of George Washington and the Redcoats. But when Franklin made the snake, he was actually trying to get the colonies to unite with the British to fight the French.
It was a plea for a unified defense strategy during the Albany Congress.
Decades later, as the relationship with England soured, the snake was recycled. It’s the ultimate pivot. The same image used to support the British Empire in 1754 became the rallying cry to tear it down in 1774. Paul Revere even used it in the masthead of his newspaper, The Massachusetts Spy.
He just updated the snake.
👉 See also: Why the Air France Crash Toronto Miracle Still Changes How We Fly
It’s kind of funny how symbols work. They’re empty vessels. You can pour any meaning into them if the timing is right. By the time the Revolutionary War was in full swing, the snake had evolved. It grew from a chopped-up carcass into the coiled, aggressive serpent on the Gadsden flag.
The Technical Side of the Woodcut
Franklin was a printer by trade. He wasn't some high-society artist with a silk scarf. He was a guy who got ink under his fingernails.
Making a woodcut is a physical, grueling process. You have to carve away the "white space" so the remaining raised wood catches the ink. Every line on that snake represents a physical gouge Franklin made into a block of wood.
The lines are thick and crude because they had to withstand the pressure of a printing press thousands of times over. If the lines were too thin, they’d snap. The ruggedness of the snake wasn't a stylistic choice; it was a technical necessity.
Why It Went Viral
It’s the first "viral" image in American history. Within weeks of appearing in Philadelphia, other newspapers in New York and Boston were copying it. They didn't have Getty Images back then. They had to hand-carve their own versions of Franklin’s snake to put in their own papers.
This led to several "variants" of the snake. Some snakes looked more like eels. Some had slightly different lettering. But the core DNA—the "Join, or Die" text at the bottom—remained the same. It was the 18th-century equivalent of a meme template.
✨ Don't miss: Robert Hanssen: What Most People Get Wrong About the FBI's Most Damaging Spy
The Legacy Nobody Talks About
We focus on the politics, but we forget the psychological impact. Franklin was the first person to tell Americans that they were "Americans." Before this, if you asked a guy in Richmond what he was, he’d say he was a Virginian. A guy in Boston was a Massachusetts man.
Franklin’s snake forced them to see themselves as part of a single organism.
If the head (New England) dies, the tail (South Carolina) dies too. It was a brutal, graphic way to explain interdependency. It’s probably the most successful piece of graphic design in history because we’re still using it nearly 300 years later.
Critics at the time thought it was too gruesome. Some loyalists to the British Crown thought it was a threat. They were right. It was a threat. It was a warning that a collective is always more dangerous than a crowd of individuals.
Real World Insights for Today
If you’re looking to apply the lessons of Franklin’s snake to modern communication or history studies, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Visuals Beat Text: In a world of information overload, a single striking image always wins. Franklin knew his readers were busy, so he gave them a logo.
- Recycle Your Best Ideas: The snake wasn't a one-hit wonder. It was rebranded and reused as the political climate changed. Don't be afraid to pivot a strong concept.
- Keep It Simple: Notice how there’s no background? No trees, no grass, no fancy borders. Just the snake and the words. Complexity is the enemy of a message that needs to travel fast.
- Check the Source: Whenever you see the snake today, ask yourself which version it is. Is it the 1754 version (the French and Indian War) or the 1774 version (the Revolution)? The context changes everything.
To really understand the "Join or Die" snake, you have to look past the history books and see it for what it actually was: a desperate, brilliant, and slightly gory piece of marketing by a man who was tired of watching his neighbors argue while their house was on fire.
If you want to see the original, the few surviving copies of the May 9, 1754, Pennsylvania Gazette are held in places like the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Seeing the ink on the page makes it real. It wasn't just a symbol; it was a call to action that actually worked.
Next Steps for History Buffs:
If you're researching this for a project or just out of curiosity, your next move should be to compare Franklin’s snake to the Gadsden flag ("Don't Tread on Me"). Look at the anatomy of the snakes. One is broken and pleading for unity; the other is whole and threatening anyone who comes near. It’s a perfect visual timeline of how the American identity shifted from "we need help" to "leave us alone." Check out the digital archives at the Library of Congress to see high-resolution scans of these original newspapers—the detail in the woodgrain is still visible.