Patrick Henry used the phrase in his last public speech, given on March 1799, in which he denounced The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Clasping his hands and waving his body back and forth, Henry declaimed, “Let us trust God, and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.” At the end of his oration, Henry fell into the arms of bystanders and was carried almost lifeless into a near-by tavern. Two months afterward he was dead.

Early Use

The phrase has been attributed to Aesop, both directly in his fable The Four Oxen and the Lion[1] and indirectly from The Bundle of Sticks[2].

The first attributed use in modern times is to John Dickinson in his revolutionary war song The Liberty Song. In the song, first published in the Boston Gazette in July 1768, he wrote: “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!”

Patrick Henry used the phrase in his last public speech, given on March 1799, in which he denounced The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Clasping his hands and waving his body back and forth, Henry declaimed, “Let us trust God, and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.” At the end of his oration, Henry fell into the arms of bystanders and was carried almost lifeless into a near-by tavern. Two months afterward he was dead.

Mottos

Kentucky’s first governor, Isaac Shelby, was particularly fond of the stanza from the Liberty Song. Since 1942, this phrase is the official non-Latin state motto of Kentucky. In 2002, the Kentucky legislature approved an official Latin motto: “Deo gratiam habeamus”, which stands for “Let us be grateful to God”.

On the Missouri flag, the phrase is also stated around the center circle.