John Bull and Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of British-American Relations
From Enemy to Ally

This cartoon, alleging British atrocities, was produced at the beginning of the War of 1812 and reproduced by American publishers trying to whip up anti-British sentiment. It may have been inspired by a massacre at Chicago in the aftermath of which British Army Colonel Henry Proctor purchased American scalps.

On August 24, 1814, a British force led by General Robert Ross (1766-1814) and Admiral George Cockburn (1772-1853) burned Washington's principal government buildings, including the Capitol, which contained the Library of Congress. To an American bystander, who complained about the burning of the "elegant library," the Admiral expressed his regret, asserting that he made war "neither against Letters nor Ladies."

Until 1940 it was thought that no Library of Congress book had survived the burning of the Capitol. In that year, a benefactor of the Library, Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach (1876-1952), presented to the Library the volume seen here, which Admiral Cockburn took as a souvenir. It bears this notation, said to be in Cockburn's hand: "taken in the President's room in the Capitol, at the destruction of that building by the British, on the capture of Washington 24th, August 1814."

Here is a copy, written in 1840 by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), of the words for the"Star-Spangled Banner." A Washington attorney, Key witnessed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor on the night of September 13 14, 1814. Exhilarated by the successful defense of the fort, Key wrote the words that became in 1931 the national anthem of the United States.

In this cartoon the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis (1801-1889), seeking recognition of the independence of the southern states by France and Britain, is rebuffed by Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and Napoleon III (1808-1873). In one hand Davis carries a plate of cotton, with which the South hoped to sway Britain because its textile industry was dependent on the supply of Southern cotton. Queen Victoria declared Britain neutral on May 13, 1861.

Alfred Waud (1828-1891) and Frank Vizetelly (1830-ca.1883), both British, were two of the most accomplished sketch artists covering the Civil War. Waud drew throughout the war for Harper's Weekly; Vizetelly, who sympathized with the South, drew for the Illustrated London News. In this sketch by Waud of General Daniel Sickles (1825-1914) and his staff, reconnoitering along the Potomac River, Vizetelly is depicted as the civilian riding at Sickles's side.

This drawing, expressing the widespread sympathy in Britain for the grief felt in the United States after Lincoln's assassination, appeared in the popular British magazine, Punch . The artist was John Tenniel (1820-1914), the famous illustrator of Alice in Wonderland.

This moving letter of condolence to Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882), suffering from the shock of her husband's assassination, was written by Queen Victoria (1819-1901) from her residence on the Isle of Wight, to which she frequently withdrew under the weight of melancholy over the loss of her own husband, Prince Albert (1819-1861). The prince was, she told Mrs. Lincoln, "the light of my Life my stay my all" whose death in 1861 had left her "utterly broken-hearted."

The damage inflicted on Union shipping by the C.S.S. Alabama and other Confederate commerce raiders built in Britain during the Civil War threatened to provoke war between America and Britain. In this cartoon Jefferson Davis assaults the Union, represented by a soldier enveloped by a Copperhead (an epithet for a southern sympathizer in the North) with a club labeled the "Pirate Alabama," furnished by Britain, depicted as John Bull, lurking behind the Confederate president.

This cartoon by John Tenniel shows Britain, in the person of Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, conciliating the American eagle, representing Secretary of State, Richard Olney (1835-1917), who in 1895 accused Britain of violating the Monroe Doctrine by attempting to appropriate lands claimed by Venezuela in a gold-producing area bordering British Guiana. The territorial dispute was settled by arbitration.

World War I produced a flood of patriotic songs, written by popular and obscure composers alike. Here is an example of the latter, showing an American soldier arriving in Europe and greeting British and French compatriots.

On January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), presented to Congress a list of Fourteen Points that would constitute the basis for a peace settlement of World War I acceptable to the United States. The fourteenth and final point called for the establishment of a League of Nations, which the United States Senate ultimately refused to permit the nation to join.

This photograph was taken at Buckingham Palace on December 26, 1918, and signed by President and Mrs. Wilson (1872-1961), King George V (1865-1936), Queen Mary (1867-1953) and Princess Mary (1897-1965) during Wilson's triumphal tour of Great Britain in the last week of December 1918. During the tour the President took a brief trip to Carlisle, England, the birthplace of his mother.

During World War II, under the authority of the Lend Lease Act of March 11, 1941, the United States distributed more than fifty billion dollars of aid to Britain and other allied powers who were unable to pay for the necessities needed to conduct the war. In this photograph, shot in December 1941, British children, evacuated from London's East End, are receiving a meal made from American dehydrated vegetables, provided under the Lend Lease program.

World War II inspired American song writers to write patriotic music, much of it dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the British people. Before the U.S. entered the war, some Americans, opposed to another involvement in a European conflict, also found their voice in songs.

These charts show the mutual British-American contributions to the air war against the Axis powers in 1943. The British effort far exceeded the American at this point, although the balance shifted as the war progressed and as the growth of the American Army Air Force accelerated.

The point of this cartoon, based on the American popular song "Night and Day" is that the American Air Force, commanded by General Ira Eaker (1896-1987), bombed Germany during daylight hours and the British, commanded by Air Marshal Portal (1885-1949), bombed at night.

American popular music, especially jazz, became extremely popular in Britain after World War I, a popularity that has persisted. The "Flying Yanks," advertised here as playing a benefit for the British Red Cross in Derby, were a highly regarded World War II Air Force Dance band.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) and Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) established a close working relationship even before the United States officially entered World War II. The meetings the two leaders held in August 1941 at Argentia Bay off Newfoundland resulted in the promulgation of the Atlantic Charter. General George Marshall (1880-1959) and General Sir John Dill (1881-1944) are standing behind and to the left of the two statesmen.

In Churchill's speech of March 9, 1946, to the Virginia General Assembly, he salutes Virginia as "the cradle of the Great Republic" and reminisces about "so much of what we have in common," including the "light of the Elizabethan age, with Shakespeare, Raleigh and Grenville." Churchill concluded by asserting that "among the English-speaking peoples, there must be the union of hearts based upon conviction and common ideals."

On April 20, 1946, at a ceremony in the Library of Congress, British novelist W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) presented an autograph copy of his novel Of Human Bondage, originally titled, "Beauty for Ashes" to repay the debt owed the Americans for shelter during the recent war. Maugham stated: "it is not only for my own small family, but for all those of my fellow countrymen who found refuge on these shores that I wish to offer this manuscript to you . . .as an acknowledgment of the debt we owe you."

In 1947 Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a plan under the terms of which the government of the United States granted billions of dollars to the nations of western Europe to enable them to rebuild their war ravaged economies. Here a British family is seen receiving food from the United States under the auspices of the Marshall Plan.