Note 45 — UNCLE SAM. BY ALBERT MATTHEWS.

Massachusetts Spy, July 20, 1814, p. 3-2. It is curious to see how history repeats itself. Between 1898 and his death, President McKinley was sometimes alluded to as "William I." In the Boston Herald of January 28, 1907, we read of "Kaiser Theodore," and in the same paper of November 11, 1907, of "Theodore I." Just as Monroe was alluded to in 1814 as "the heir apparent," so now the same term is applied to Secretary Taft. See Nation, August 22, 1907, LXXXV, 153; Boston Herald, November 6, 1907, p. 6-5; Boston Evening Transcript, December 2, 1907; Boston Herald, March 3, 1908, p. 6-3. Even the word "imperial" is not new to our politics. In the New York Herald of May 5, 1813, it was satirically said that "the bewilderification of the enemy, on beholding our imperial standard, baffles all description" (p. 2-4).

Two examples of the spreadeagleism of the times will prove amusing. The following toast was given at Waterville, Maine, on July 4, 1815: "The Eagle of the United States—'May she extend her wings from the Atlantic to the Pacific; and fixing her talons on the Isthmus of Darien, stretch with her beak to the Northern Pole'" (Salem Gazette, July 18, 1815, p. 4-1). Capt. Ross Bird of the United States Army having been placed under arrest and bereft of his sword, he sent in his resignation, in part as follows: "In leaving the service, I am not abandoning the cause of republicanism, but yet hope to brandish the glittering steel in the field, and carve my way to a name which shall prove my country's neglect; and when this mortal part shall be closetted in the dust, and the soul shall wing its flight for the regions above, in passing by the palefaced moon, I shall hang my hat upon brilliant Mars, and make a report to each superlative star—and arriving at the portals of Heaven's high Chancery, shall demand of the attending Angel to be ushered into the presence of Washington" (New York Herald, November 10, 1813, p. 1-3).