the eXile - editorial

Issue #13/94, July 6 - 20, 2000

Uncle Sam, Ass-Goblin

When expatriate Americans gather in Moscow this weekend to celebrate the 4th of July, one name will be on everybody’s lips: Uncle Sam. No, we Americans never forget ol’ Sam—at least not his name, which has come to symbolize us, nor the popularized image of him, that strict but virile old man with the hollow cheeks and the white goatee who points at us and tells us he needs us on the front.

No, America never forgets Uncle Sam, at least not the Sam it knows and loves. But it does forget that Uncle Sam was inspired by a real person. The real Uncle Sam was a man who suffered greatly. He died forgotten and disgraced in the very country that adopted his name-a country that, in our opinion, doesn’t deserve its more excellent and tragic symbol.

If you want to know why we here at the eXile aren’t very patriotic, just take a look at the history of Samuel Wilson—the man who inspired Uncle Sam, and almost certainly the unhappiest closeted gay man in our country’s history.

The general outlines of the Uncle Sam story have always been fairly well known. Samuel Wilson was born on September 13, 1766, in a town called Menotomy-the modern-day Arlington, Massachusetts. He grew up in Mason, New Hampshire, where his mother, a strong, stern woman, kept the family farm in order while his infirm musician father convalesced. In 1789, he and his brother Edmund walked to Troy, New York, where they set up a meat-packing and slaughterhouse business. It was this business that ultimately led Uncle Sam to give his name to the new republic.

During the War of 1812, Wilson-who over the years had come to be popularly known around the town of Troy as Uncle Sam— supplied barrels of beef to U.S. soldiers stationed at the nearby military base at Greenbush, New York. He marked his barrels “U.S.” Soldiers who received the barrels joked that the initials stood for “Uncle Sam”. Soon, new recruits were using the name “Uncle Sam” to refer to anything belonging to the government. The slang term circulated quickly and soon began appearing in periodicals and newspapers.

Thomas Nast, a prominent 19th-century cartoonist, produced many of the early sketches of Uncle Sam. Tellingly, Nast never met Sam Wilson. Instead, he based his likeness of Uncle Sam—the famous bearded figure with the multicolored top hat—on a well-known clown of the day named Dan Rice, who often dressed in red, white and blue costumes at circuses.

The real Sam Wilson was, by all accounts, clean-shaven, moon-faced, and of athletic build. Well into old age he had not white hair, but a full head of deep auburn hair, which he kept braided in back. He did not wear red, white and blue costumes at all, but instead preferred well-tailored suits made of wool and silk. The Troy, New York historical society even glumly reports that even the young and not-so-affluent Samuel Wilson never bought a suit in Troy itself, always preferring to travel to Albany or New York City to have them made by city tailors.

Another real irony of the Uncle Sam story is that the Sam whose name our soldiers in 1812 came to associate with beef never actually slaughtered an animal in his life. It was Sam’s brother Edmund who actually butchered the animals; Sam himself was in charge of the books, the storefront, and, as he was later to put it in his memoirs, “towne relashuns”.

Historians have since ascribed the popularity of his and his brother’s business to Samuel’s gregariousness around Troy. He knew everyone, and not only the men, even earning the celebrated “Uncle Sam” nickname from wives who noted his fondness for little children, particularly boys.

By 1820 Sam’s name was legend across America. But Sam himself, an increasingly lonely man of 54, had begun to fall upon hard times. In the fall of that year he was arrested on the mysterious charge of “vagrancy” in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was an unusual charge to be applied to a man of means and great fame in a place not far from his home. Historians dismissed the incident for quite some time. But today, groups like the New York-based Oscar Wilde society believe that Sam Wilson’s real crime in Saratoga was in not concealing his true nature. “In the old days,” says society director Trudy Stevenson, “the charge was often altered to protect the reputations of affluent men. They called it anything—fraud, petty theft, vagrancy.”

In any case, Sam spent four months in a two-room jail in Saratoga, during which time he began to write his memoirs. Never finished, the “Autobiography of Uncle Sam” is a tortured, difficult document, meandering and superstitious in tone. The first three chapters refer very little to concrete events in Sam’s life, focusing instead on an “unspeekable shayme” for which he feared that God-in Sam’s writings a terrible figure, and never merciful-would have him “condemmed to helle forever.”

Sam at Saratoga Springs fell ill with consumption. He was near death when he was released back into his brother’s custody early in 1821. On May 13, 1821, he died.

The once-popular figure in Troy was doomed, after his arrest and release, to die in ignominy and dishonor. Edmund placed a four-foot kielbasa in his ass and gave him a grand public burial, but it was to no avail; his funeral was sparsely attended.

We were cruel then, and we’re cruel now. Uncle Sam, we didn’t deserve you. And maybe, just maybe, we don’t deserve to celebrate this latest Independence Day.

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