United States early mascot, Lady Columbia
The first and longest ruling mascot of the United States made her debut before the country was even a country.
An article in the recent October Smithsonian magazine tells the history. It was in 1697, with the colonies evolving, that Columbiana began being called an “emblem” of the “New Heaven” of the American Colonies.
Columbiana was portrayed as a goddess, draped in a neoclassical gown, holding a sword, an olive branch, and a laurel wreath as a meaning for justice, peace, and victory. By the early 1700’s the name Columbiana had become Lady Columbia with her image spread across the Colonies, particularly during and after the Revolution when The Colonies became the United States.
Her image spread across the country to embody the nation’s highest aspirations. She served as a nurturing mother figure and during the Revolution was an avenging angel. At the beginning of the Revolution in 1774, she became a rallying cry as an African American poet Phillis Wheatley sent General George Washington an ode to Lady Columbia: “Columbia’s arm prevails … proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side … thy every action let the goddess guide.”
After the end of the Revolution, in 1798, lawyer and poet Joseph Hopkinson wrote a poem that was set to music that became an unofficial national anthem: “Hail Columbia, happy land; Hail, ye heroes, heav’born band; Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause.”
Though largely forgotten today, Columbia reigned for two centuries as the nation’s emblem. It represented the United States Manifest Destiny fueling the western expansion across the plains, and the Rocky Mountains until the country reached the Pacific Ocean. Her famous image is in John Gast’s 1872 painting “American Progress.”
Her last role over the next decade was greeting swells of immigrants arriving from Europe as Lady Columbia helped to hold the door open for victims of German persecution to the “asylum of the oppressed” read a political cartoon published in 1881. Her image is said to “help rally millions of immigrants toward an American identity” in a patriotic movement called “Columbianism.”
When, during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition of the World’s Fair in Chicago, and there was no longer any western frontier, Lady Columbia appeared to have “outlived her usefulness as a national symbol.”
Meantime, a new female avatar for the nation captured the imaginations of millions of new European immigrants … the Statue of Liberty, the gift from France, became the new guardian as a symbol for a land where the “down-trodden and despised found a chance,” as the New York Times wrote in 1903. This elegant statue, holding the flaming chalice high, was the enlightenment for the rest of the world.
Words of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” of Francis Scott Key’s poem, now also set to music, began to be hailed as the United States national anthem. Long in use, it officially became the United States national anthem in 1931, replacing “Hail Columbia.”
Lady Columbia’s name continues to be a reminder of her generational popularity as found in the name of Columbia University, where a seated Columbia greets all with her arms aloft. In Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery, a grand Columbia statue honors mothers of fallen veterans. Frequent appearances still appear in movie theaters as the logo for Columbia Pictures has featured her for over a century since 1924.
Interestingly, during Lady Columbia’s reign when the War of 1812 began, a new figure joined her in posters and the press … that of Uncle Sam. Together, they all continued to be joined as a “fierce embodiment of American Independence.”
Uncle Sam still reigns, though his image has somewhat changed now and then as he enters his third century.
Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more info and membership.