“There’s no way to overstate just what this cartoon means to American history, Pop Culture history and comics history”(Ed Jaster, Heritage Auctions). Indeed, Benjamin Franklin’s artwork representing the British American colonies of the time is expected to fetch over $100,000 at the upcoming Signature Historical Manuscripts Auction by Heritage Auctions.
The lot is an original copy of Franklin’s famous woodcut political cartoon, showing a snake severed into eight different pieces, each one labeled with the initials of a colony. The drawing was published in Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, on September 13, 1754. Only one more original copy is known to exist today and it is currently safely kept at the Library of Congress.
Called “Join or Die”, the cartoon stood for colonial unity and was reused (slightly modified) many times against British oppression before the American Revolution. The Vice President of Heritage Auctions, Ed Jaster, said “It’s important on so many levels, to collectors of all kinds, across many genres, that there’s no telling where the bidding for this could go”.
