I remember learning the v
enerable Pledge of Allegiance that was slightly different than what is recited today. Two words, “under God,” were added to what I learned. Because I was at a tender age, only in first grade, I didn’t think seriously about it until I was much older.
Then my curiosity kicked in.
Why were those two words added to a paragraph repeated woodenly every school day by children who didn’t understand their meaning? I learned that once again we Americans just don’t have a good grasp on history, nor do we want to.
Submitted for your approval:
The Pledge of Allegiance: A Short History by Dr. John W. Baer
Francis Bellamy (1855 -1931), a Baptist minister, wrote the original Pledge in August 1892. He was a Christian Socialist. In his Pledge, he is expressing the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist Utopian novels. “Looking Backward” (1888) and “Equality” (1897).
Francis Bellamy, in his sermons and lectures, and Edward Bellamy, in his novels and articles, described in detail how the middle class could create a planned economy with political, social and economic equality for all. The government would run a peace time economy similar to our present military industrial complex.
The Pledge was published in the Sept. 8 issue of The Youth’s Companion, the leading family magazine and the Reader’s Digest of its day. Its owner and editor, Daniel Ford, had hired Francis in 1891 as his assistant when Francis was pressured into leaving his Baptist church in Boston because of his socialist sermons. As a member of his congregation, Ford had enjoyed Francis’s sermons. Ford later founded the liberal and often controversial Ford Hall Forum, located in downtown Boston.
In 1892, Francis Bellamy was also a chairman of a committee of state superintendents of education in the National Education Association. As its chairman, he prepared the program for the public schools’ quadricentennial celebration for Columbus Day in 1892. He structured this public school program around a flag-raising ceremony and a flag salute — his “Pledge of Allegiance.”
His original Pledge read as follows: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and (to*) the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” He considered placing the word, “equality” in his Pledge, but knew that the state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans. [* ‘to’ added in October 1892.]
Dr. Mortimer Adler, American philosopher and last living founder of the Great Books program at Saint John’s College, has analyzed these ideas in his book, “The Six Great Ideas.” He argues that the three great ideas of the American political tradition are “equality, liberty and justice for all.” Justice’mediates between the often conflicting goals of liberty and equality.
In 1923 and 1924 the National Flag Conference, under the ‘leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, changed the Pledge’s words, “my Flag,” to “the Flag of the United States of America.” Bellamy disliked this change, but his protest was ignored.
In 1954, Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words, “under God,” to the Pledge, now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer.
Bellamy’s granddaughter said he also would have resented this second change. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there.
What follows is Bellamy’s own account of some of the thoughts that went through his mind in August, 1892, as he picked the words of his Pledge:
“It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution… with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people…
“The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the ‘republic for which it stands.’ …And what does that vast thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation — the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future?
“Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity.’ No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all…”
The Bellamy Salute — http://www.sott.net/article/291204-The-forgotten-history-of-the-Bellamy-Salute
This is interesting history. I’ve never understood pledging allegiance to a flag – to a country, sure. To a constitution, at least to our constitution, yes. But that very constitution provides for freedom of religion, which is negated by the words added to the pledge in 1954. There is a conflict there – one document decreeing religious freedom, and another countermanding it.