The lineage of Uncle Sam, benign personification of the nation, was again raised last week. Was this lean Yankee character in beaver hat and striped trousers who reflects the emotions of ...

Uncle Sam didn’t really become a household name until Thomas Nast’s sketches in Harper’s Weekly in the late 1860s and ’70s, when Nast made him a hero of the Union cause.

Uncle Sam is an easily recognizable piece of wartime propaganda. And legend says he was based off a real person—though that may not actually be the case.