Our allegiance to the pledge

Who wrote the pledge?

A 37-year-old socialist minister named Francis Bellamy. Bellamy, a Northern Baptist from Boston, was prominent in the Christian Socialist movement, which taught that capitalism bred the un-Christian vice of greed. After years of condemning the evils of capitalism, Bellamy was forced from his pulpit for sermons with themes such as “Jesus the Socialist.” Out of work, the preacher was hired by a friend, the publisher of a popular family magazine, The Youth’s Companion, to help with public relations. The magazine had made a cause of promoting flags in public schools, and Bellamy wrote the pledge as part of that campaign. The version of the pledge that the magazine published, unsigned, on Sept. 8, 1892, is remarkably similar to the one we know today. It read: “I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

What was Bellamy’s inspiration?

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As a socialist, Bellamy believed in a strong national government; his primary concern, he would later write, was to foster national unity in a country where the wounds of the Civil War were still fresh. The opening words, “I pledge allegiance,” just tumbled onto the paper, he said, with the following 20 words flowing after “two hours of arduous mental labor.” To make the “‘one nation’ idea clear,” he explained, “we must specify that it is indivisible.” Bellamy was tempted to appropriate the slogan of the French Revolution—“Liberty, equality, fraternity.” He rejected that, though, as “too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization.” But, he said, if America was not yet ready for equality, “we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all.”

How did the pledge catch on?

The Youth’s Companion was the largest-selling periodical of its time, with a circulation of 500,000. The magazine urged schools to incorporate the pledge in flag-raising ceremonies marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the New World. President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation making the flag ceremony the focal point of the Columbus Day celebration, and 12 million American schoolchildren recited the pledge for the first time on Oct. 21, 1892. It proved to be such a popular and uplifting event that thousands of schools made the pledge a daily ritual.

How did the pledge evolve?