12 August 2024
[14 August 2024: added reference to Samuel Adams]
The United States government is often referred to as Uncle Sam, who is rendered pictorially as a white-haired, goateed man wearing a suit and top hat that are adorned with the stars and stripes. Perhaps, the most famous image of Uncle Sam is James Montgomery Flagg’s WWI recruiting poster, but Uncle Sam was not the creation of Flagg. The term predates Flagg’s poster by over a century.
The term is a play on the initials U.S., making the government into an uncle, an older, masculine authority figure, stern but caring.
The earliest known use of Uncle Sam is in a 7 June 1803 letter by Robert Orr, a master armorer at the armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. In the letter to his son, Orr mentions that:
I expect to go to New Haven Next Week to inspect armes Made by Ely Whitney for Unkel Sam 500
The number 500 is likely a reference to the number of rifles to be inspected.
Another early use is in the journal of Isaac Mayo, a midshipman on the USS Wasp. In the 24 March 1810 entry, Mayo writes of nearly losing his footing and going overboard in rough seas:
24 [March] weighed anchor stood down the harbour, passed Sandy Hook, where there are two light-houses, and put to sea, first and second day aut most deadly seasick, oh could I have got on shore in the hight of it, I swear that Uncle Sam, as they call him, would certainly forever have lost the services of at least one sailor — ordered aloft by Capt L, when I could not keep my feet on deck, about to remonstrate but as usual in such cases, came of only second best.
These two uses show that Uncle Sam was reasonably common in US military and naval slang in the opening years of the nineteenth century. But the term did not come into widespread use outside of government service until the War of 1812. A letter in Vermont’s Bennington News-Letter on 23 December 1812 complains of the toll conscription was taking on the town:
The expence to this town, or more properly to the unfortunate individuals who were drafted, cannot be less than from two to three thousand dollars, exclusive to the expence the U. States of pay, clothing, rations &c. Now Mr. Editor—pray if you can inform me, what single solitary good thing will, or can acrue [sic] to (Uncle Sam) the U. S. for all the expence, marching and countermarching, pain, sickness, death &c. among us? What was the object to be obtained by it?
And Massachusetts’s Salem Gazette has this from 30 April 1813:
He confirms a great part of the statements before published. The troops proceeded about 20 miles a day, and might have marched on foot, much farther—Says many received little or nothing; but that his horses were taken into the camp, and fairly appraised, so that “Uncle Sam,” (as the soldiers say) might be chargeable in case they died in service.
But I have found what might possibly be an even earlier precursor to Uncle Sam. It is the use of Sam, sans Uncle, in a poem published in a Tory newspaper, the Royal Gazette, in British-occupied New York City on 22 January 1780. The poem, titled Mary Cay, is an allegory of the American Revolution up to that date, meant to be sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle. In the poem, Sam represents the rebellious elements in the colonies. The fourth through sixth stanzas of the poem read:
IV. For Molly counted full thirteen,
And bundled now with Sammy,
Who said she ought to be a Queen,
And never mind her Mammy.
V. So Sam an[d] Moll together plot,
To make a stout resistance,
And from the school, in short, they got
Some truants for assistants.
VI. Then mother call’d for Dick and Will
To teach the wench her duty,
They drubb’d her now and then, but still
They coax’d her as a beauty.
In the poem, thirteen-year-old Molly is the American colonies, her mother is, of course, England, and Dick and Will are Richard and William Howe, the brothers who commanded British forces in North America. Later in the poem are allegorical references to the battle of Bunker Hill, the entry of France into the war, and the dismissal of the Howe brothers.
The question is whether this use of Sam is an early form of Uncle Sam, if it is a reference to Samuel Adams, a well-known advocate for American independence, or if it is just a common name chosen at random. If uses of Sam in this fashion can be found that date to between 1780 and 1803, those would argue strongly in favor of it being a precursor. But at the moment, it is just a tantalizing possibility and that the Sam in the poem is an allegory for Samuel Adams would be the most likely reading.
Uncle Sam has also generated its share of etymythologies. The most famous is that the term comes from Samuel Wilson, a U.S. government inspector of provisions purchased for the troops during the War of 1812. Allegedly Wilson would stamp the casks he inspected with the letters U.S., which some wags took to be a reference to “Uncle Sam” Wilson. Even if the facts are true, it is not the origin as examples of Uncle Sam predate the war by some years.
Another legend is that the U.S. Army unit, formed in 1808, the United States Light Dragoons, or U.S.L.D., went by the nickname Uncle Sam’s Lazy Dogs. But like the Samuel Wilson explanation, the 1803 Orr letter disproves this as the origin of the phrase.
And there is also a claim that a version of the song Yankee Doodle from c. 1789 contains a reference to Uncle Sam in one of its stanzas. Putting aside the fact that the initials U.S. did not come into use until later, none of the versions containing the reference appear before 1824.
So it would seem that, for now at least, the 1803 Orr letter is the oldest known use of the phrase Uncle Sam, but it would have been in military slang use for some period before that.
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