Uncle Sam, popular symbol for the United States, usually associated with a cartoon figure having long white hair and chin whiskers and dressed in a swallow-tailed coat, vest, tall hat, and striped trousers. His appearance is derived from two earlier symbolic figures in American folklore: Yankee Doodle, a British-inspired nickname for American colonials during the American Revolution, and Brother Jonathan, a rural American wit who, by surprising displays of native intellgence, always triumphed over his adversaries in plays, stories, cartoons, and verse.
The origin of the term Uncle Sam, though disputed, is usually associated with a businessman from Troy, New York, Samuel Wilson, known affectionately as “Uncle Sam” Wilson. The barrels of beef that he supplied the army during the War of 1812 were stamped “U.S.” to indicate government property. That identification is said to have led to the widespread use of the nickname Uncle Sam for the United States, and a resolution passed by Congress in 1961 recognized Wilson as the namesake of the national symbol.
Uncle Sam and his predecessor Brother Jonathan were used interchangeably to represent the United States by American cartoonists from the early 1830s to 1861. Cartoonists such as Sir John Tenniel and John Leech of the British humour magazine Punch helped evolve the modern figure by drawing both Brother Jonathan and Uncle Sam as lean, whiskered gentlemen wearing top hats and striped pants. Probably the first U.S. political cartoonist to crystallize the figure of Uncle Sam was Thomas Nast, beginning in the early 1870s. By 1900, through the efforts of Nast, Joseph Keppler, and others, Uncle Sam was firmly entrenched as the symbol for the U.S. One of the most familiar treatments in the 20th century was shown in James Montgomery Flagg’s World War I recruiting poster, also used in World War II, for which the caption read, “I Want You.”