Sam Wilson eventually became active in politics and died on July 31, 1854, at age eighty-eight. A tombstone erected in 1931 at Oakwood Cemetery in Troy reads: “In loving memory of ‘Uncle Sam,’ the name originating with Samuel Wilson.” That association was first officially recognized during the administration of President John F. Kennedy, by an act of the Eighty-seventh Congress, which states that “the Congress salutes ‘Uncle Sam’ Wilson of Troy, New York, as the progenitor of America’s National symbol of ‘Uncle Sam.’ “
Though it may be stretching coincidence thin, John Kennedy and Sam Wilson spoke phrases that are strikingly similar. On the eve of the War of 1812, Wilson delivered a speech, and a plan, on what Americans must do to ensure the country’s greatness: “It starts with every one of us giving a little more, instead of only taking and getting all the time.” That plea was more eloquently stated in John Kennedy’s inaugural address: “ask not what America will do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Johnny Appleseed: 1810s, Massachusetts
Sam Wilson’s boyhood playmate John Chapman was born on September 26, 1774, in Leominster, Massachusetts. Chapman displayed an early love for flowering plants and trees—particularly apple trees. His interest progressed from a hobby, to a passion, to a full-fledged obsession, one that would transform him into a true American folk character.
Though much lore surrounds Chapman, it is known that he was a devoted horticulturist, establishing apple orchards throughout the Midwest. He walked barefoot, inspecting fields his sapling trees had spawned. He also sold apple seeds and saplings to pioneers heading farther west, to areas he could not readily cover by foot.
A disciple of the eighteenth-century Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, John Chapman was as zealous in preaching Scripture as he was in planting apple orchards. The dual pursuits took him, barefooted, over 100,000 square miles of American terrain. The trek, as well as his demeanor, attire, and horticultural interests, made him as much a recognizable part of the American landscape as his orchards were. He is supposed to have worn on his head a tin mush pan, which served both as a protection from the elements and as a cooking pot at his impromptu campsites.
Frontier settlers came to humorously, and sometimes derisively, refer to the religious fanatic and apple planter as Johnny Appleseed. American Indians, though, revered Chapman as a medicine man. The herbs catnip, rattlesnake weed, horehound, and pennyroyal were dried by the itinerant horticulturist and administered as curatives to tribes he encountered, and attempted to convert.
Both Sam Wilson and John Chapman played a part in the War of 1812. While Wilson, as Uncle Sam, packaged rations for government troops, Chapman, as Johnny Appleseed, traversed wide areas of northern Ohio barefoot, alerting settlers to the British advance near Detroit. He also warned them of the inevitable Indian raids and plundering that would follow in the wake of any British destruction. Later, the town of Mansfield, Ohio, erected a monument to John Chapman.
Chapman died in March of 1845, having contracted pneumonia from a barefoot midwinter journey to a damaged apple orchard that needed tending. He is buried in what is known today as Johnny Appleseed Park, near the War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the state in which he died.
Although Johnny Appleseed never achieved the fame of his boyhood playmate Uncle Sam, Chapman’s likeness has appeared on commemorative U.S. stamps. And in 1974, the New York and New England Apple Institute designated the year as the Johnny Appleseed Bicentennial. Chapman’s most enduring monuments, however, are the apple orchards he planted, which are still providing fruit throughout areas of the country.
American Flag: Post-1777, New England
So much patriotism and sacrifice are symbolized by the American flag that it is hard for us today to realize that the star-spangled banner did not have a single dramatic moment of birth. Rather, the flag’s origin, as that of the nation itself, evolved slowly from humble beginnings, and it was shaped by many hands—though probably not those of Betsy Ross. The latest historical sleuthing indicates that her involvement, despite history book accounts, may well have been fictive. And no authority today can claim with certainty who first proposed the now-familiar design, or even when and where the Stars and Stripes was first unfurled.
What, then, can we say about the origin of a flag that the military salutes, millions of schoolchildren pledge allegiance to, and many home owners hang from a front porch pole every Fourth of July?
It is well documented that General George Washington, on New Year’s Day of 1776, displayed over his camp outside Boston an improvised “Grand Union Flag.” It combined both British and American symbols. One upper corner bore the two familiar crosses—St. George’s for England, and St. Andrew’s for Scotland—which had long been part of the British emblem. But the background field had thirteen red and white stripes to represent the American colonies. Since the fighting colonists, including Washington, still claimed to be subjects of the British crown, it’s not surprising that their homemade flag should carry evidence of that loyalty.
The earliest historical mention of an entirely American “Stars and Stripes” flag—composed of thirteen alternating red and white stripes, and thirteen stars on a blue field—is in a resolution of the Continental Congress dated June 14, 1777. Since Congress, and the country, had more urgent matters to resolve than a finalized, artistic flag design, the government stipulated no specific rules about the flag’s size or arrangement of details. It even failed to supply Washington’s army with official flags until 1783, after all the major war battles had ended.
Francis Scott Key, composer of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
During the Revolutionary War, the American army and navy fought under a confused array of local, state, and homemade flags. They were adorned variously with pine and palmetto trees, rattlesnakes, eagles, stripes of red, blue, and yellow, and stars of gold—to mention a few.
In fact, it was not until 1814, nearly forty years after its authorization by Congress, that the flag began to be widely discussed by Americans as a symbol of the country. In that year, an American flag bearing fifteen stars flew over Fort Henry at Baltimore, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Where in the gradual, piecemeal evolution of the American flag does the figure of the Philadelphia seamstress born Elizabeth Griscom belong?
Betsy Ross. When John Ross, an upholsterer, was killed in a munitions explosion in 1776, his wife, Betsy, took over operation of their tailoring business. The Ross store was on Philadelphia’s Arch Street, not far from the State House, on Chestnut Street, where history was being made almost daily.
According to legend, Betsy Ross was visited at her shop by General George Washington in June of 1776. They were supposed to have discussed various flag designs. And Washington allegedly settled for one composed of seven red and six white stripes, and thirteen five-pointed white stars arranged in a circle—though he had requested six-pointed stars. Betsy Ross is said to have convinced him that it would be easier for her to cut out five-pointed stars. When the general departed, legend has it, the seamstress commenced stitching the official American flag.
Historians find it significant that not a single one of the numerous flags that flew at different times and places during the Revolutionary War is of the design alleged to be the handiwork of Betsy Ross.
Further, the tale recounted in history books was told by Betsy Ross herself—on her deathbed in 1836, and to her eleven-year-old grandson, William J. Canby. Betsy Ross at the time was eighty-four years old. Canby, in turn, did not publicly relate the tale until 1870, when he presented it at a meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. That was thirty-four years after he had heard it as a boy, and almost a hundred years after the incident was alleged to have occurred.
Historical records verify that George Washington was in Philadelphia in June of 1776. But in his written itinerary there is no mention of a meeting with a local seamstress. Nor in Washington’s diary is there any evi
dence of his concern with the design of an official American flag. In fact, Congress had not yet convened a committee to tackle any flag design, nor at the time was there congressional talk of replacing the Grand Union Flag. Washington had made personal modifications in that flag, combining American with British features, but he had not expressed a desire to abandon it entirely. The consensus among historians who have investigated the Betsy Ross legend is that it’s no more than that—a legend: a nonverifiable story handed down from generation to generation. And one begun by the lady herself.
History and legend, though, have a way of blending in the crucible of time. Betsy Ross’s deathbed tale has inextricably rooted itself in the heart of American folklore. And whether in time it is unequivocally proved or disproved, it almost assuredly will be told and retold.
Pledge of Allegiance: 1892, Rome, New York
The pledge of allegiance to the American flag is neither an old verse nor one composed by the Republic’s founding fathers. It was written especially for children in the summer of 1892, to commemorate that year’s celebration of Columbus Day in public schools throughout the country.
The pledge’s first appearance in print was on September 8, 1892, in The Youth’s Companion, an educational publication. It is estimated that more than ten million American schoolchildren recited it that Columbus Day. In its original form, it read: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands—one nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all.”
Its author was an editor of The Youth’s Companion, Francis Bellamy of Rome, New York. Bellamy intended his verse to be a one-time recitation. But its immediate popularity among the nation’s schoolchildren and teachers transformed it first into an annual Columbus Day tradition, then into a daily classroom ritual. It became one of the earliest verses memorized by schoolchildren.
Since its debut, Bellamy’s pledge has undergone two alterations. In 1923, the United States Flag Association replaced the somewhat ambiguously personal “my flag” wording with the more explicitly patriotic “the Flag of the United States of America.” And in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill that introduced a religious note to the pledge, with the addition of the words “under God.”
Washington, D.C.: 1790
Although much has been written about the selection of Washington, D.C., as the nation’s capital, little has appeared concerning one of the early motivating factors for locating the center of government in an area that then was a remote swampland. This part of the story involves the desire of congressmen for a safe haven where they could peacefully conduct business without harassment by disgruntled civilians and soldiers.
The idea for a national capital city in a remote, inconvenient area originated at a June 1783 meeting of the Congress in the Old City Hall in Philadelphia. While several factors contributed to the decision, one in particular galvanized Congress to action.
The War of Independence had recently been concluded. The treasury was flat broke. The new nation had no credit, still lacked a President, and was heavily in debt to its soldiers for back pay. On June 20, a large and angry mob of unpaid soldiers invaded Philadelphia to present their grievances to Congress. It was not the first such violent confrontation. That day, though, a number of agitated congressmen—some angry, others frightened—expressed their weariness with such direct public intrusions. They launched a movement to establish a federal city where lawmakers could transact the business of state without civilian intimidation.
Several locations were considered. New Englanders, led by Alexander Hamilton of New York, sought a capital in the north. Southerners, represented by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, argued for a location in the south. In 1790, in an attempt to placate both sides, the recently elected President, George Washington, chose a site eighteen miles up the Potomac River from his home in Mount Vernon—a location then midway between north and south. In addition, the area was between the thriving seaports of Alexandria, Virginia, and Georgetown, Maryland. No one denied, however, that the ten-mile-square site was a bog.
After several years of planning, in September 1793 President Washington himself laid the cornerstone for the first U.S. Capitol. Office buildings were quickly erected. By 1800, the U.S. government had officially moved headquarters from Philadelphia to Washington.
No one was pleased with the new city.
Congressmen complained that it was too isolated. A wilderness. They and their families resisted constructing homes there; as did government employees. Groups of citizens petitioned that the capital city be relocated to a more desirable, prestigious, and accessible location. What had been conceived by Washington as a “city of magnificent distances” was now disparagingly attacked by congressmen as a “capital of miserable huts,” “a mud-hole.” Abigail Adams, wife of the first President to occupy the presidential mansion, expressed a desire to move out, lamenting, “We have not the least convenience.”
By the close of Thomas Jefferson’s term of office, in 1809, the population of the nation’s new city was scarcely five thousand. To foreign heads of state, America’s capital was a nightmare. With a dearth of cultural institutions and personal conveniences, and with the Potomac continually muddying the dirt streets, foreign ambassadors stationed in the capital actually collected “hardship pay” from their governments.
The advent of the steam engine and the telegraph quelled some of the complaints. These inventions put the city in touch with the outside world. But the real change of attitude toward the new capital, in the minds of both ordinary citizens and government officials, resulted from a national tragedy.
In August 1814, the British invaded the city. They burned the President’s mansion, the Capitol, and the Navy Arsenal. Americans were incensed. And they were united, too, against an enemy that had attempted to destroy the nation’s capital—even if that capital was inaccessible, inhospitable, and undesirable to live in.
All clamor to relocate the city ceased. An immense and patriotic rebuilding effort began. Jefferson donated his own extensive collection of books to replace the destroyed contents of the Library of Congress. And the badly charred wooden planks of the President’s mansion were painted a shimmering white, conferring upon it for all time the title the White House.
In 1874, Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York’s Central Park, began landscaping the Capitol grounds with trees from various states and foreign countries. Contributing to that effort in 1912, the Japanese government presented the United States with a gift of three thousand cherry trees, whose blossoming thereafter would signal the city’s annual Cherry Blossom Festival. By then, of course, the site on the Potomac once intended to keep citizens from lobbying Congress had become the home of lobbyists.
Mount Rushmore: 1923, South Dakota
The faces originally to be carved into Mount Rushmore were not the fatherly countenances of four famous Presidents but the romanticized visages of three Western legends: Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and John Colter. Planned as a tourist attraction to draw money into South Dakota’s economy, the monument, as originally conceived, might scarcely have achieved its goal.
The full story of the origin of Mount Rushmore begins sixty million years ago, when pressures deep within the earth pushed up layers of rock. The forces created an elongated granite-and-limestone dome towering several thousand feet above the Dakota prairie lands. The first sculpting of the mountain was done by nature. The erosive forces of wind and water fashioned one particularly protuberant peak, which was unnamed until 1885.
That year, a New York attorney, Charles E. Rushmore, was surveying the mountain range on horseback with a guide. Rushmore inquired about the impressive peak’s name, and the guide, ribbing the city lawyer, answered, “Hell, it never had a name. But from now on we’ll call the damn thing Rushmore.” The label stuck. And later, with a gift of five thousand dollars, Charles Rushmore became one of the earliest contributors to the presidential memorial.
The origin of the sculpture is better document
ed and more inspiring than that of the mountain’s name.
The idea to transform a gigantic mountaintop into a colossus of human figures sprang from the mind of a South Dakota historian, Doane Robinson. In 1923, Robinson presented to the state his plan to simultaneously increase South Dakota’s tourism, strengthen its economy, and immortalize three “romantic western heroes.” A commission then sought the skills of renowned sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum, an authority on colossi.
Idaho born, Borglum started as a painter, then switched to sculpture, and his fame grew in proportion to the size of his works. The year Doane Robinson conceived the idea for a Mount Rushmore memorial, Borglum accepted a commission from the United Daughters of the Confederacy to carve a head of General Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain in Georgia.
Mount Rushmore, though, beckoned with the greater challenge.
Borglum opposed sculpting Western heroes. The notion was overly provincial, he argued. A colossus should capture prominent figures. In a letter dated August 14, 1925, Borglum proposed the faces of four influential American Presidents.
Construction on the 6,200-foot-high wilderness peak was fraught with dangers. And the mountain itself was inaccessible except by foot or horseback, which necessitated countless climbs to lug up drills and scaffolding. But for Borglum, two features made the remote Rushmore peak ideal. The rocks faced southeast, ensuring maximum sunlight for construction, and later for viewing. And the peak’s inaccessibility would protect the monument from vandals.
Bitter winters, compounded by a chronic shortage of funds, continually threatened to terminate construction. Weathered surface rock had to be blasted away to expose suitably firm stone for sculpting. The chin of George Washington, for instance, was begun thirty feet back from the original mountain surface, and Theodore Roosevelt’s forehead was undertaken only after one hundred twenty feet of surface rock were peeled away.
Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things Page 37
