Columbia (personification)

Columbia (/kəˈlʌmbiə/; kə-LUM-bee-ə) is the female national personification of the United States. It was also a historical name applied to the Americas and to the New World. The association has given rise to the names of many American places, objects, institutions and companies; such as: Columbia University, the District of Columbia (U.S. capital), "Hail, Columbia" (unofficial national and official vice-presidential anthem), as well as the ship Columbia Rediviva, which would give its name to the Columbia River. Images of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World, erected in 1886) largely displaced personified Columbia as the female symbol of the United States by around 1920, although Lady Liberty was seen as an aspect of Columbia.[1]

"Miss Columbia" redirects here. For other uses, see Miss Columbia (disambiguation) and Columbia (disambiguation).
Personified Columbia in American flag gown and Phrygian cap, which signifies freedom and the pursuit of liberty, from a World War I patriotic poster

Columbia is a New Latin toponym, in use since the 1730s with reference to the Thirteen Colonies which would go on to form the United States. It originated from the name of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and from the ending -ia, common in Latin names of countries (paralleling Britannia, Gallia, and others).

History
Personification of the Americas in Meissen porcelain, c. 1760, from a set of the Four Continents.

Early
Main article: Personification of the Americas

The earliest type of personification of the Americas, seen in European art from the 16th century onwards, reflected the tropical regions in South and Central America from which the earliest travellers reported back. These were most often used in sets of female personifications of the Four Continents. America was depicted as a woman who, like Africa, was only partly dressed, typically in bright feathers, which invariably formed her headress. She often held a parrot, was seated on a caiman or alligator, with a cornucopia. Sometimes a severed head was a further attribute, or in prints scenes of cannibalism were seen in the background.[2]

18th century

Though versions of this depiction, tending as time went on to soften the rather savage image into an "Indian princess" type, and in churches emphasizing conversion to Christianity, served European artists well enough, by the 18th century they were becoming rejected by settlers in North America, who wanted figures representing themselves rather than the Native Americans they were often in conflict with.[3]

Massachusetts Chief Justice Samuel Sewall used the name Columbina (not Columbia) for the New World in 1697.[4] The name Columbia for America first appeared in 1738[5][6] in the weekly publication of the debates of Parliament in Edward Cave's The Gentleman's Magazine. Publication of Parliamentary debates was technically illegal, so the debates were issued under the thin disguise of Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput and fictitious names were used for most individuals and placenames found in the record. Most of these were transparent anagrams or similar distortions of the real names and some few were taken directly from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels while a few others were classical or neoclassical in style. Such were Ierne for Ireland, Iberia for Spain, Noveborac for New York (from Eboracum, the Roman name for York) and Columbia for America—at the time used in the sense of "European colonies in the New World".[7]

Columbia and an early rendition of Uncle Sam in an 1869 Thomas Nast cartoon having Thanksgiving dinner with a diverse group of immigrants[8][9]
An 1872 painting titled American Progress which depicts Columbia as the Spirit of the Frontier, carrying telegraph lines across the Western frontier to fulfill manifest destiny

By the time of the Revolution, the name Columbia had lost the comic overtone of its Lilliputian origins and had become established as an alternative, or poetic name for America. While the name America is necessarily scanned with four syllables, according to 18th-century rules of English versification Columbia was normally scanned with three, which is often more metrically convenient. For instance, the name appears in a collection of complimentary poems written by Harvard graduates in 1761 on the occasion of the marriage and coronation of King George III.[10]

Behold, Britannia! in thy favour'd Isle;
At distance, thou, Columbia! view thy Prince,
For ancestors renowned, for virtues more;[11]

The name Columbia rapidly came to be applied to a variety of items reflecting American identity. A ship built in Massachusetts in 1773 received the name Columbia Rediviva and it later became famous as an exploring ship and lent its name to new Columbias.

After Independence

No serious consideration was given to using the name Columbia as an official name for the independent United States, but with independence the name became popular and was given to many counties, townships, and towns as well as other institutions.

In part, the more frequent usage of the name Columbia reflected a rising American neoclassicism, exemplified in the tendency to use Roman terms and symbols. The selection of the eagle as the national bird, the heraldric use of the eagle, the use of the term Senate to describe the upper house of Congress and the naming of Capitol Hill and the Capitol building were all conscious evocations of Roman precedents.

The adjective Columbian has been used to mean "of or from the United States of America", for instance in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, Illinois. It has occasionally been proposed as an alternative word for American.

Columbian should not be confused with the adjective pre-Columbian, referring to a time period before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

Personification
Columbia wearing a warship bearing the words "World Power" as her "Easter bonnet" (cover of Puck, April 6, 1901)

As a quasi-mythical figure, Columbia first appears in the poetry of African-American Phillis Wheatley starting in 1776 during the revolutionary war.

One century scarce perform'd its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia's fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom's heaven-defended race!
Fix'd are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia's arm prevails.[12]

Especially in the 19th century, Columbia was visualized as a goddess-like female national personification of the United States and of liberty itself, comparable to the British Britannia, the Italian Italia Turrita and the French Marianne, often seen in political cartoons of the 19th and early 20th century. This personification was sometimes called Lady Columbia or Miss Columbia. Such iconography usually personified America in the form of an Indian queen or Native American princess.[13]

The image of the personified Columbia was never fixed, but she was most often presented as a woman between youth and middle age, wearing classically-draped garments decorated with stars and stripes. A popular version gave her a red-and-white-striped dress and a blue blouse, shawl, or sash, spangled with white stars. Her headdress varied and sometimes it included feathers reminiscent of a Native American headdress while other times it was a laurel wreath, but most often it was a cap of liberty.

Early in World War I (1914–1918) the image of Columbia standing over a kneeling "Doughboy" was issued in lieu of the Purple Heart Medal. She gave "to her son the accolade of the new chivalry of humanity" for injuries sustained in "the" World War.

In World War I, the name Liberty Bond for savings bonds was heavily publicized, often with images from the Statue of Liberty. The personification of Columbia fell out of use and she was largely replaced by the Statue of Liberty as a feminine symbol of the United States.[14] When Columbia Pictures adopted Columbia as its logo in 1924, she appeared (and still appears) bearing a torch—similar to the Statue of Liberty and unlike 19th-century depictions of Columbia.

Statues of the personified Columbia may be found among others in the following places.

Modern appearances

Since 1800, the name Columbia has been used for a wide variety of items.

  • Political cartoon from 1860 depicting Stephen A. Douglas receiving a spanking from Columbia as Uncle Sam looks on approvingly
  • A defiant Columbia in an 1871 Thomas Nast cartoon shown protecting a defenseless Chinese man from an angry Irish lynch mob that has just burned down an orphanage
  • Columbia in an 1865 Thomas Nast cartoon asking the government to allow black soldiers to vote
  • Carte de visite (c. 1866) featuring a woman dressed as Columbia and a man dressed as a Revolutionary War general
  • Columbia (representing the American people) reaches out to oppressed Cuba with blindfolded Uncle Sam in background (Judge, February 6, 1897; cartoon by Grant E. Hamilton)
  • Columbia from a Columbia Records phonograph cylinder package
  • Columbia at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific
  • Lady Columbia recognized World War I Doughboy soldier as having suffered injury due to his willingness to serve humanity
  • Columbia Calls – Enlist Now for U.S. Army, World War I recruitment poster by Vincent Aderente
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See also

Notes
  1. Donald Dewey (2007). The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons. New York University Press. p. 13. ISBN 9780814719855. Retrieved 1 February 2020. (Minus the torch and the book, Columbia herself had been called 'Liberty' long before F. S. Bartholdi's sculpture was dedicated in New York harbor in 1886.)
  2. Le Corbellier, 210–218; Higham, 45–52
  3. Higham, 55–57
  4. Thomas J. Schlereth, "Columbia, Columbus, and Columbianism" in The Journal of American History, v. 79, no. 3 (1992), 939
  5. The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 8, June 1738, p. 285
  6. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Dec. 1885, pp. 159–65
  7. Debates in Parliament, Samuel Johnson.
  8. Kennedy, Robert C. (November 2001). "Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner, Artist: Thomas Nast". On This Day: HarpWeek. The New York Times Company. Archived from the original on November 23, 2001. Retrieved November 23, 2001.
  9. Walfred, Michele (July 2014). "Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner: Two Coasts, Two Perspectives". Thomas Nast Cartoons. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  10. Hoyt, Albert. "The Name 'Columbia'", The New England Historical & Genealogical Register, July 1886, pp. 310–13.
  11. Pietas et Gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigiensis apud Novanglos, no. xxix. Boston, Green and Russell, 1761.
  12. Selections from Phillis Wheatley Poems and Letters Archived 2006-09-08 at Archive.today
  13. "Origins: The Female Form as Allegory". Archived from the original on 2019-10-23. Retrieved 2014-03-25.
  14. David E. Nye (1996). American Technological Sublime. MIT Press. p. 266. ISBN 9780262640343.
  15. "Hail Columbia". Hail Columbia. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
  16. Literata (2011). "Columbia". The Order of the White Moon Goddess Gallery. Archived from the original on October 24, 2012. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
  17. Hatchett, Charles (1802), "Outline of the Properties and Habitudes of the Metallic Substance, lately discovered by Charles Hatchett, Esq. and by him denominated Columbium", Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, I (January): 32–34.
  18. Nicholson, William, ed. (1809), The British Encyclopedia: Or, Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Comprising an Accurate and Popular View of the Present Improved State of Human Knowledge, 2, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, p. 284.
  19. Bernard F. Dick. The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row: Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 40–42.

References
  • Higham, John (1990). "Indian Princess and Roman Goddess: The First Female Symbols of America", Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. 100: 50–51, JSTOR or PDF
  • Le Corbeiller, Clare, "Miss America and Her Sisters: Personifications of the Four Parts of the World", The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 19, pp.210–223, PDF
  • George R. Stewart (1967). Names on the Land. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston.
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