Introduction

Common folklore holds that Uncle Sam's origins trace back to soldiers stationed in upstate New York, who would receive barrels of meat stamped with the initials U.S. The soldiers joked that these initials were a reference to the troops' meat supplier, (Uncle) Samuel Wilson of Troy, New York.

It has been argued by historian Glen Clever that the image of Uncle Sam was influenced by or even based on the character Sam Slick, created by Canadian satirist Thomas Chandler Haliburton.Fact: date=April 2009

The 87th United States Congress adopted the following resolution on September 15, 1961: "Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives that the Congress salutes Uncle Sam Wilson of Troy, New York, as the progenitor of America's National symbol of Uncle Sam." Monuments mark his birthplace in Arlington, Massachusetts, and site of burial in Oakwood Cemetery, Troy, New York. Another sign marks "The boyhood home of Uncle Sam" outside his second home in Mason, NH. The first use of the term in literature is seen in an 1816 allegorical book, The Adventures of Uncle Sam in Search After His Lost Honor by Frederick Augustus Fidfaddy, Esq., also in reference to the aforementioned Samuel Wilson.

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, according to some, 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.

Other media

In addition to the appearance of Uncle Sam in politics, the character has also appeared as a comic book hero for Quality and then DC Comics. He is presented as the living embodiment of the United States and is the leader of the Freedom Fighters. See Uncle Sam (comics). There was also a short cartoon in the 1980s called "Uncle Sam's Adventures."

Furthermore, Uncle Sam appeared as a horror villain in the eponymously titled 1997 film, Uncle Sam. In this film, a veteran who died during Desert Storm rises from the dead to exact justice upon those he percieves as "unAmerican" after some teenagers burn the American Flag on his grave. The poster is a full-on spoof of the classic Uncle Sam poster, with a zombified Sam and the tagline "I want you... dead."