Changes

===Join or Die===

===Join or Die===

[[Image:Join-die.jpg|thumb|290px|left]]

[[Image:Join-die.jpg|thumb|290px|left]]

The famous cartoon entitled "Join, or Die," printed on 9 May 1754 in Franklin's ''Pennsylvania Gazette'', shows a sliced up snake that forms a map of the colonies.  It is impotent unless it joins together, as nature clearly intended.  Snakes were often used to represent America.  Georgia, the newest colony,  is missing, as is Delaware (then part of Pennsylvania). While the idea behind the illustration was Franklin's, historians have not discovered who did the actual engraving. In form the illustration follows the plan of an emblem book illustration, with a motto, a symbolic picture, and an explanatory text; Franklin even referred to it in correspondence as an "emblem." The snake image may be a composite of those found in Mark Catesby's ''The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands'' (1731-43). The image of a snake and its dissection was influential in political illustrations concerning the [[Stamp Act]] of 1765, the American Revolution, and both the Union and Confederate causes in the American Civil War.<ref>Karen Severud Cook, Benjamin Franklin and the Snake That Would Not Die British Library Journal 1996 22 (1): 88-112. 0305-5167 </ref>

The famous cartoon entitled "Join, or Die," printed on 9 May 1754 in Franklin's ''Pennsylvania Gazette'', shows a sliced up rattlesnake that forms a map of the colonies.  It is impotent unless it joins together, as nature clearly intended.  Rattlesnakes--powerful and dangerous creatures that were not found in Britain--were often used to represent America.  Georgia, the newest colony,  is missing, as is Delaware (then part of Pennsylvania). While the idea behind the illustration was Franklin's, historians have not discovered who did the actual engraving. In form the illustration follows the plan of an emblem book illustration, with a motto, a symbolic picture, and an explanatory text; Franklin even referred to it in correspondence as an "emblem." The snake image may be a composite of those found in Mark Catesby's ''The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands'' (1731-43). The image of a snake and its dissection was influential in political illustrations concerning the [[Stamp Act]] of 1765, the American Revolution, and both the Union and Confederate causes in the American Civil War.<ref>Karen Severud Cook, Benjamin Franklin and the Snake That Would Not Die British Library Journal 1996 22 (1): 88-112. 0305-5167 </ref>

==Autobiography==

==Autobiography==