The Pledge_ A History of the Pledge of Allegiance - Jeffrey Owen Jones [18]
Upham launched a campaign in the Companion of advertisements and supporting editorial material urging young readers to sell certificates to family, friends, and neighbors at ten cents apiece until they saved up the ten dollars needed to purchase a school flag from the Companion. The Flag Over the Schoolhouse program, as it came to be known, was a triumph by every measure. Beginning in 1888, the Companion sold increasing numbers of flags each year, peaking at more than twenty-five thousand in 1891. While helping launch a national tradition of displaying flags at schools, Upham’s venture also scored a trifecta for the magazine—raising patriotic awareness, achieving valuable promotion, and generating income from the sale of flags.
Besides standards for schools, the Companion’s premium operation sold many other kinds of flags and flag paraphernalia: a pocket flag with carrying case, wall flags for the home, flag mending kits, and more. (Later, again combining ideology with self-interest, the Companion supported state laws requiring public schools to fly the flag, which many states adopted.) Upham also ran a parallel flag promotion: an essay contest on “The Patriotic Influence of the American Flag When Raised over the Public Schools.” The school with the best essay in each state received a flag measuring nine by fifteen feet.
To further nurture the spirit of patriotism, in 1891 the Companion announced the founding of the Lyceum League of America—a network of local youth groups whose mission was to celebrate the value of American citizenship through lectures, debates, and other activities. Within a year, the Companion’s Lyceum League numbered twelve hundred societies with thirty thousand members. (Upham modeled these societies on New England village lyceums, which had bloomed earlier in the nineteenth century. Offering speakers and cultural programs, these groups were often a community’s sole source of culture and entertainment.)
As the school flag campaign rolled forward, Upham set his imagination in gear for a new inspiration. It came to him in the summer of 1891 while vacationing in his native New Hampshire. As he reclined in the shade of a pine tree, savoring the aromas of boughs and bark and sap, his mind drifted toward the upcoming World Columbian Exposition. The official groundbreaking for the Chicago world’s fair was set to take place amid great fanfare in October 1892. Why couldn’t the Companion hitch its wagon to this very powerful horse?
When he returned to the office, Upham began to flesh out his idea. And it wasn’t long before he found the perfect connection: Columbus Day. There was as yet no national holiday celebrating the discovery of America, but many localities, New York City prominent among them, sponsored big celebrations.
In fact, Columbus Day fests in some American towns dated back to 1792, the three hundredth anniversary of the Italian explorer’s grand transatlantic voyage. Italian-Americans, particularly in New York, began routinely commemorating Columbus Day as an expression of pride in their Italian heritage. These early tributes were also linked to a desire among many Catholics to establish a rightful place as Americans when Catholicism was widely viewed with considerable scorn. These Columbus commemorations were not the type of public expression we associate with a modern holiday—parades and speeches—but were instead considered an opportunity to visit one’s church, to acknowledge the day in prayer. And they served to remind other Americans of the ethnic and religious background of what most people at the time considered to be the first American.
The number of Catholic Americans had been instantly amplified with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. And despite ongoing suspicion of them by Protestants, by 1850 Catholics had become the largest religious denomination in