‘Uncle Sam’ Just about every American knows that name – symbol and personification of the United States.
Indeed his image might turn up just about anywhere – a tall. spare man with chin’ whisker, usually dressed in a red-white-blue costume of striped trousers, swallow-tailed coat, and tall hat with a hand of stars.
Uncle Sam — actually an extended abbreviation of the initials: U.S. – has been around longer than anyone can remember. Have you ever wondered how the nickname originated and gained popularity.
The term evolved in the early 1800s … and was clothed with modern day dignity last fall when an “Uncle Sam Monument” was dedicated in Troy. N Y.
Why Troy?
It seems that was the principal home of Samuel Wilson, nicknamed Uncle Sam, officially recognized by the US Senate and House in 1961 as the progenitor of the national symbol. The recognition climaxed a drive made by Troy civic. veterans and business groups.
Encyclopedia Americana summed up Wilson’s Tr0y activity as follows:
“During the War of 1812 merchants of Troy- supplied large quantities of provisions to the American Army. Samuel Wilson who slaughtered cattle and packed beef in Troy supplied his beef to the Army packed in barrels of white oak. It soon became known as Uncle Sam’s, as Sam Wilson familiarly was called. From this grew the well-known appellation Uncle Sam, as applied to the U. S. ”
The version varies in different source books but the basic story is the same. World Book says the meat barrels bore the large initials “U.S.” stamped by Wilson. At first, that source said the term Uncle Sam apparently was used derisively by people in Upper New York and Vermont who opposed the war.
The nickname appeared in a Troy newspaper in 1813 and spread rapidly. In 1816 it was part of a book title, “The Adventures of Uncle Sam.”
Sam’s costume, decorated with stars and stripes, appeared in the original cartoons in the 1830s. Seba Smith, a humorist and political essayist, was cartooned as Uncle Sam with such an outfit. A clown of the 1800s. Dan Rice made the costume popular.
Since the American Republic was very young when Uncle Sam emerged, cartoonists at first pictured him as a young man without a beard.
He hasn’t in all cases been pictured as popular. For example, in one post-Civil War version a british cartoonist portrayed him as a tightwad.
In more recent times, our revered Uncle has been depicted in many moods. Remember his elation at America’s first moon landing? His persuasive stance in the World War ll portrayal urging men and women to work in defense plants?
One of the best remembered characterizations was that by James Montgomery showing a resolute, finger-pointing Uncle Sam on war-time posters with the words “I want YOU for the US Army”
That, in brief, is the story of your “Uncle Sammy,” as he was popularized in song during World War I. Little could Sam Wilson and his friends have known that the nickname started 168 years ago would gain such enduring fame.