Among the names by which American heroes and popular figures have been called, how did Uncle Sam come to be adopted as the national denominator? As well ask why Americans were called Yankees, long before the Revolution, or why “Yanks” has been the name applied by Allied soldiers to the forces of the United States in the European battlefields, and has been accepted by regiments from North and South alike. As well try to run down the first use of “Brother Jonathan,” in much the same sense as that in which we now employ “Uncle Sam.” Learned men and some of the unlearned have delved deep to find the origin of the term Uncle Sam, and the significance of his out-of-style clothes. One school of these explorers has presumed to trace Uncle Sam back to an obscure Samuel Wilson, who during the War of 1812 was engaged in a government contract for beef and pork to feed the United States army. Nobody mentioned this yarn until thirty years later, when Jack Frost in his _Book of the Navy_ gave it currency, without stating where he found what he himself calls “a silly joke.” Frost asserts that from casks marked “U. S.” by Samuel Wilson, the idea was taken by the soldiers, and that gradually it spread through the army and the nation. [Illustration: AN EARLY PORTRAYAL OF UNCLE SAM A reproduction of the title page of the first illustrated comic paper in the United States, 1846] The only facts that can be ascertained on this subject are that in 1813 there was a firm of meat packers at Troy, in which Samuel Wilson was a partner. Then that on September 7, 1813, the Troy _Post_ printed an article containing the expression “Loss upon loss, and no ill luck … except what lights upon UNCLE SAM’S shoulders.” A note in the newspaper goes on to say “This cant name for our government has got almost as current as ‘John Bull.’ The letters ‘U. S.’ on the government wagons, etc., are supposed to have given rise to it.” A month later another paper commented on the number of deserters in the army, adding “The pretence is, that _Uncle Sam_, a now popular explication of the U. S., does not pay well.” Three or four years later, other newspapers, who appeared to have no knowledge of Samuel Wilson, made the far more probable explanation that the term Uncle Sam was simply taken from the letters “U. S.” on soldiers’ caps and knapsacks. Even the Indians accepted the new term, and when President Madison was at the northern front asked the privilege “to shake hands with Uncle Sam.”[A] [A] Note--We have the word of one searcher that as early as 1807 a regiment of Light Dragoons was raised whose initials, “U. S. L. D.,” on wagons and accouterment were waggishly interpreted to mean “Uncle Sam’s Lazy Dogs.”