
           The Strange Origin of the Pledge of Allegiance
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Every class day over 60 million public and parochial school teachers
and students in the US recite the Pledge of Allegiance along with
thousands of Americans at official meetings of the Boy Scouts, Girl
Scouts, Elks, Masons, American Legion, and others.  During the
televised bicentennial celebration of the US Constitution for the
school children on September 17, 1987,  the children as a group did
not recite any part of the Constitution.  However, President Reagan did
lead the nation's school children in reciting the Pledge.  Yet probably
not one of them knows the history or original meaning of the Pledge.

In the presidential campaign of 1988, George Bush successfully used
the Pledge in his campaign against Mike Dukakis.  Ironically, Bush did
not seem to know the words of the Pledge until his campaign manager
told him to memorize it.  The teachers and students in the New England
private schools he attended, Greenwich Country Day School and Phillips
Andover Academy, did not recite the pledge.  By contrast, Dukakis and
his mother, a public school teacher, recited the Pledge in the public
schools.  Yet Bush criticized Dukakis for vetoing a bill in
Massachusetts requiring public school teachers but not private school
teachers to recite the Pledge.  Dukakis vetoed the bill on grounds
that it violated the constitutional right of free speech.

[Actually, the case Dukakis *cited* when vetoing (and was subsequently
attacked by Bush for it) was a religious freedom (!) case; see my
upcoming post "The Pledge, part II" a speech by ACLU director Ira
Glassner which contains a lot more information you've probably
not heard.  It also happens to be among the best speeches I've ever
heard, and demonstrates devastatingly what many of us already knew;
what a bad job Dukakis did responding to Bush's attacks about being
"liberal" and (God forbid) and being a member of the ACLU.]

How did this Pledge of Allegiance to a flag replace the US
Constitution and Bill of Rights in the affections of many Americans?
Among the nations in the world, only the USA and the Philippines,
imitating the USA, have a pledge to their flag.  Who institutionalized
the Pledge as the cornerstone of American patriotic programs and
indoctrination in the public and parochial schools?

In 1892, a socialist named Francis Bellamy created the Pledge of
Allegiance for *Youth's* *Companion*, a national family magazine for
youth published in Boston.  The magazine had the largest national
circulation of its day with a circulation around 500 thousand.  Two
liberal businessmen, Daniel Ford and James Upham, his nephew, owned
*Youth's* *Companion*.

One hundred years ago the American Flag was rarely seen in the
classroom or in front of the school.  Upham changed that.  In 1888, the
magazine began a campaign to sell American flags to the public
schools.  By 1892, his magazine had sold American flags to about 26
thousand schools(1).

In 1891, Upham had the idea of using the celebration of the 400th
anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America to promote
the use of the flag in the public schools.  The same year, the magazine
hired Daniel Ford's radical young friend, Baptist minister,
Nationalist, and Christian Socialist leader, Francis Bellamy, to help
Upham in his public relations work.  Bellamy was the first cousin of
the famous American socialist, Edward Bellamy.  Edward Bellamy's
futuristic novel, *Looking* *Backward*, published in 1888, described a
utopian Boston in the year 2000.  The book spawned an elitist socialist
movement in Boston known as "Nationalism," whose members wanted the
federal government to nationalize most of the American economy.  Francis
Bellamy was a member of this movement and a vice president of its
auxiliary group, the Society of Christian Socialists(2).  He was a
baptist minister and he lectured and preached on the virtues of
socialism and the evils of capitalism.  He gave a speech on "Jesus the
Socialist" and a series of sermons on "The Socialism of the Primitive
Church."  In 1891, he was forced to resign from his Boston church, the
Bethany Baptist church, because of his socialist activities.  He then
joined the staff of the *Youth's* *Companion*(3).

By February 1892, Francis Bellamy and Upham had lined up the National
Education Association to support the *Youth's* *Companion* as a
sponsor of the national public schools' observance of Columbus Day
along with the use of the American flag.  By June 29, Bellamy and Upham
had arranged for Congress and President Benjamin Harrison to announce
a national proclamation making the public school ceremony the
center of the national Columbus Day celebrations for 1892(4).

Bellamy, under the supervision of Upham, wrote the program for this
celebration, including its flag salute, the Pledge of Allegiance.  His
version was,

       "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which
       it stands -- one nation indivisible -- with liberty and
       justice for all."

This program and its pledge appeared in the September 8 issue of
*Youth's* *Companion*(5).  He considered putting the words "fraternity"
and "equality" in the Pledge but decided they were too radical and
controversial for public schools(6).

The original Pledge was recited while giving a stiff, uplifted right
hand salute, criticized and discontinued during WWII.  The words "my
flag" were changed to "the flag of the United States of America"
because it was feared that the children of immigrants might confuse
"my flag" for the flag of their homeland.  The phrase "Under God," was
added by Congress and President Eisenhower in 1954 at the urging of
the Knights of Columbus(7).

The American Legion's constitution includes the following goal: "To
foster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism."  One of its
major standing committees was the "Americanism Commission" and its
subsidiary, the "Counter Subversive Activities Committee."  To the
fear of immigrants, it added the fear of communism(8).

Over the years the Legion has worked closely with the NEA and with the US
Office of Education.  The Legion insisted on "one hundred percent"
Americanism in public school courses in American history, civics,
Geography and English.  The Pledge was a part of this Americanism
campaign(9) and, in 1950, the Legion adopted the Pledge as an official
part of its own ritual(10).

In 1922, the Ku Klux Klan, which also had adopted the "one hundred
percent Americanism" theme along with the flag ceremonies and the
Pledge, became a political power in the state of Oregon and arranged
for legislation to be passed requiring all Catholic children to
attend public schools.  The US Supreme Court later overturned this
legislation(11).

Perhaps a team of social scientists and historians could explain why
over the last century the Pledge of Allegiance has become a major
centerpiece in American patriotism programs.  A pledge or loyalty oath
for children was not built around the Declaration of Independence --
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal..."  Or the Gettysburg address -- "a new nation conceived in
liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal..."

Apparently, over the last century, Americans have been uncomfortable
with the word "equality" as a patriotic theme.  In 1992 the nation will
begin its second century with the Pledge of Allegiance.  Perhaps the
time has come to see that this allegiance should be to the US
constitution and not to a piece of cloth.

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John W. Baer is a professor of economics at Anne Arundel Community
College in Arnold, Maryland.
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Notes:
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1.  Louise Harris, *The Flag Over the Schoolhouse,* C. A. Stephens
Collection, Brown University, Providence, R.I., 1971, p. 69.
2.  Margarette S. Miller, *Twenty-three Words,* Printcraft Press,
Portsmouth, VA, 1976, pp 63-65.
3.  Ibid,  pp.  55-65.
4.  Ibid,  pp.  105-111.
5.  Ibid,  p.  123.
6.  Ibid,  p.  122.
7.  Christopher J. Kaufmann, *Knights of Columbus*, Harper & Row, NY,
1982, pp. 385-386.
8.  Raymond Moley, *The American Legion Story*, Duell, Sloan, and
Pearce, NY, 1966, p. 7.
9.  Ibid,  p.  371.
10.  Miller, p. 344.
11.  *New Catholic Encyclopedia,* Washington, D.C., Catholic University
of America, 1967, Vol. 10, p. 738-740.
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