Uncle Sam

Uncle Sam is a common national personification of the American government originally used during the War of 1812. He is depicted as a stern elderly man with white hair and a goatee beard. Typically he is dressed in clothing that recalls the design elements of the flag of the United States: a top hat with red and white stripes and white stars on a blue band and red and white striped trousers. At the time of the War of 1812, Samuel Wilson (pictured) was a prosperous middle-aged meat-packer in Troy, New York. He obtained a contract to supply beef to the Army in its campaign further north, which he shipped in barrels. The barrels, being government property, were branded with the initials "U.S.", but the teamsters and soldiers would joke that the initials referred to "Uncle Sam", who supplied the product. Over time, it is believed, anything marked with the same initials (as much Army property was) also became linked with his name. The first use of Uncle Sam in literature was in the 1816 allegorical book "The Adventures of Uncle Sam in Search After His Lost Honor" by Frederick Augustus Fidfaddy, Esq. Earlier representative figures of the United States included such beings as "Brother Jonathan," used by Punch magazine. These were overtaken by Uncle Sam somewhere around the time of the Civil War. The female personification Columbia has seldom been seen since the 1920s. The well-known recruitment image of Uncle Sam was created by James Montgomery Flagg, an illustrator and portrait artist best known for commercial art. The image of Uncle Sam was shown publicly for the first time in a picture by Flagg on the cover of the magazine Leslie's Weekly on July 6, 1916, with the caption "What Are You Doing for Preparedness?" More than four million copies of this image were printed between 1917 and 1918. The image also was used extensively during World War II when America was codenamed 'Samland' by the German intelligence agency Abwehr.