The Pledge_ A History of the Pledge of Allegiance - Jeffrey Owen Jones [1]
—PETER MEYER
1. AN AMERICAN RITUAL
On a sultry summer evening in Boston in the year 1892, a thirty-seven-year-old former clergyman named Francis Bellamy sat down at his desk in the offices of a popular family magazine where he worked and began to write:
I pledge allegiance to my flag . . .
Neither Bellamy nor anyone else could have imagined that the single twenty-three-word sentence that emerged would evolve into one of the most familiar of patriotic texts and, based on student recitations alone, perhaps the most often repeated piece of writing in the history of the English language. A standard ritual of childhood for most native-born citizens and a regular practice for many adults, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is so deeply embedded in American life that it is natural to believe that the text came from on high, or that it bubbled up spontaneously from the fruited plain, far back in our history. Before I heard, a few years ago, about Francis Bellamy and the writing of the Pledge, I had never stopped to think how or where it had originated. The Pledge of Allegiance had just always been there. It never occurred to me that a person had actually composed it. If I thought about the Pledge being written at all, I dimly pictured a man in a white wig with a quill pen, or a dashing figure in a ruffled shirt on the deck of a frigate, bombs bursting in air.
But no. As it turns out, the Pledge wasn’t scratched on parchment in the mists of time. It came to life not that long ago, very near the beginning of the twentieth century. And the birth of the Pledge was more prosaic than heroic. It wasn’t chiseled in granite or penned in blood on a battlefield. It was scribbled on scrap paper by Frank Bellamy, a guy stuck at the office on a hot summer night.
It is amusing to play historical voyeur and look back on Bellamy hunched over his desk jotting drafts on the back of an old office form. It must have seemed to him a very ordinary moment in time. There was, of course, no way for him to know that he was writing for the ages, that the words he was scribbling on deadline would spring from the lips of generations of Americans long after he was dead and gone. Never could he have conceived that in the twenty-first century multitudes of children all over the United States would begin every school day reciting his words (though somewhat altered by textual fiddling over the years). Nor could he have guessed that the flag salute he was composing—for an event that was part patriotic celebration, part promotion for the magazine that employed him—would find such a variety of uses in American life.
Today, in addition to marking the official opening of every school day for millions of students (even some homeschoolers recite it), the Pledge of Allegiance has become a ceremonial must for all occasions. Committees, councils, and legislatures—from PTAs and zoning boards to the U.S. Congress—intone the Pledge at the start of every session. Rotary, Elks, Lions, Kiwanis, Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts, American Legion, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Knights of Columbus, B’nai Brith, and scores of other clubs, societies, and associations open every meeting with the Pledge. It is recited at graduations and county fair openings, at groundbreaking ceremonies and monument dedications, at professional conventions, football games, and stock car races. It is spoken in a blended chorus of accents from around the world by newly sworn American citizens. In times of war and in times of economic distress, saying the Pledge can be a kind of incantation to express solidarity and to ward off evil.
Thinking back on the evening when he wrote the Pledge, Francis Bellamy said later in life that he intended to create a vehicle for expressing “intelligent patriotism”—not only love of country but, just as important, awareness of the nation’s ideals. Bellamy also said that, with the Civil War still very much in living memory and waves of immigrants arriving on American shores, he intended