How Uncle Sam became an American icon
Summary
The figure’s appearance and message have changed over the last 200 years, but he remains an instantly recognizable national symbol.As millions of Americans celebrate our nation’s independence on July 4, many no doubt will lament the choice between a septuagenarian and an octogenarian in the upcoming election. Perhaps they can find some comfort in the fact that our oldest elder statesman, Uncle Sam, will continue to hold office long after both Biden and Trump.
Legend has it that the personified figure of the United States was based on Samuel Willson, a merchant and meatpacker born outside Boston in 1766. During the War of 1812, Willson provided barrels of meat to American troops, stamped “U.S." The story goes that when a soldier asked what the letters stood for, he was told, “Uncle Sam Willson. It is he who is feeding the army." Historian Alton Ketchum writes that Willson really was an avuncular type: “an atmosphere of jocularity seems to have pervaded Samuel Willson’s operations wherever he went. Part of this can be traced to Uncle Sam himself, who according to the testimony of his relatives and friends, would go to considerable length to make a good joke."
But the discovery of a journal kept by Isaac Mayo, a teenage Navy midshipman, shows that the nickname Uncle Sam predated Willson. On March 24, 1810, Mayo wrote that when he embarked on the USS Wasp, “[the] first and second day out [I was] most deadly seasick, oh could I have got on shore in the hight [sic] of it, I swear that uncle Sam, as they call him, would certainly forever have lost the services of at least one sailor."
Regardless of its origins, “Uncle Sam" stuck. One of the first artistic depictions of the character was in a political cartoon published in 1832 during the debate over President Andrew Jackson’s attack on the Bank of the United States. In the anonymous engraving, titled “Uncle Sam in Danger," the character is round-faced and clean-shaven, wearing a star-and-striped gown and liberty cap. Over time, as the historian David Hackett Fischer has shown, the dressing gown was replaced by a swallow-tail coat, and the liberty cap turned into a beaver hat. Germany was a “fatherland" and Russians spoke of “Mother Russia," Fischer notes, but “the American republic is unique in its idea of the nation-state as a kindly old uncle, to whom Americans feel attached but not dependent."
During the Civil War, Uncle Sam symbolized the Union. An 1862 lithograph, “Yankee Volunteers Marching into Dixie," depicts an entire army of identical Sams, clean-shaven and smiling as they march assuredly towards victory. Around the same time, other artists began depicting Uncle Sam as a tall, lanky figure with a beard, like Abraham Lincoln. The president and the mythical figure became so closely identified that a reporter in Charleston, S.C., described how, upon hearing of the president’s assassination, a bereaved Black woman wrung her hands and wailed that “Uncle Sam" had been killed.
Sam, of course, outlived Lincoln. Perhaps the best-known image of Uncle Sam was made by illustrator James Montgomery Flagg for Leslie’s Weekly magazine in 1916, a year before America entered World War I. “What are YOU doing for Preparedness?" the stern-faced poster demanded. Once the U.S. entered the war, the text was changed to “I want YOU for the U.S. Army." Though the beard remained, Sam now resembled not Lincoln but Lord Kitchener, who had conquered Sudan on behalf of the British Empire, and whose portrait appeared on recruitment ads throughout the U.K. Dropping the kindly characteristics of Uncle Abe, this iteration of Uncle Sam was suited to a mighty military. Four million posters with Flagg’s image were distributed in the U.S. during the war, fixing his Uncle Sam in the national imagination.
During World War II, Uncle Sam swapped his high hat for a G.I. helmet. On factory posters, he urged workers to be efficient and warned against spreading rumors. A version aimed at farmers asked them to “get ready for the census taker," who would be asking about crops, livestock and tractors.
In the 21st century, Uncle Sam shows no sign of disappearing. The name is still common shorthand for the U.S. government, with recent headlines declaring “AI is Uncle Sam’s new secret weapon to fight fraud" and “Forget Silicon Valley. Class of 2024 wants to work for Uncle Sam." Whatever happens in the presidential election this November, Uncle Sam will be there to offer a comforting shoulder, a sense of purpose and, hopefully, a good joke.
Rabbi Stuart Halpern is senior adviser to the provost and deputy director of the Straus Center at Yeshiva University.
