Question

Answer the following questions after studying Benjamin Franklin’s cartoon.1. What is the title of the cartoon? 2. What does each segment of the serpent represent? 3. The section of the snake nearest the head is labeled “N.E.” for New England (NewHampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut). Travel south from there to the snake’s tail and list the colonies represented in the cartoon. 4. Which of the 13 colonies are not represented? 5. Explain the message of Benjamin Franklin’s cartoon. 6. How many years passed between the time Franklin drew this cartoon and the start of the Revolutionary War?

Answer 1

The title of the cartoon by Benjamin Franklin is "Join, or Die". It is a depiction of several of the 13 British colonies in what later became the United States of America as separate segments of a rattlesnake. South of New England are segments for the colonies of New York,  New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The colonies of Delaware and Georgia are not represented in the cartoon. By means of this cartoon, Frankin was expressing the need for the British colonies to join in order to be able to defeat the French and their Indian allies in the French and Indian war. This cartoon was first published in 1754, and it was revived twelve years later, at the onset of the American Revolution.