The Pledge_ A History of the Pledge of Allegiance - Jeffrey Owen Jones [32]
The day would feature American flags in front of public school buildings in every community. The flood of patriotic expression would crystallize when children across the country stood and saluted the flag. The special recitation would be followed by several other works that were commissioned for this extraordinary day.
Poetry, celebratory song, readings, and formal addresses were common components of most any ceremonial gathering in American towns and cities. Declamation and group recitations were standard fare, especially in any assembly having to do with patriotism and civic life. “Oratory is the parent of liberty,” said a handbook on public speaking popular at the time. The Columbus Day program to be published in the Companion for schools around the country to follow would feature a reading of President Harrison’s proclamation, a group singing of “America” (“My Country ’tis of Thee”), and a prayer or scripture reading. The Companion had also commissioned a song by Theron Brown (“Hail him who thro’ darkness first followed the Flame / that led where the Mayflower of Liberty came”) and an ode by Edna Dean Proctor (“Blazon Columbia’s emblem, / The bounteous, golden Corn! / Eons ago, of the great sun’s glow / And the joy of the earth, ’twas born”). No one seemed to think that any of these original pieces might achieve popularity beyond the 1892 event.
An oration, “The Meaning of Four Centuries,” had been assigned to W.C.P. Breckinridge, known as “the silver tongue of Kentucky.” But two drafts from the renowned speaker had proved unsatisfactory to Daniel Ford. He threw the task to the busy Bellamy who, drawing on a facility honed through years of penning weekly homilies, dashed off a speech, which Ford okayed. (“Four hundred years ago this morning, the Pinta’s gun broke the silence, and announced the discovery of this hemisphere. . . .”)
Of all the elements in the program, the one accorded the dramatic focus of the ceremony was the raising of the Stars and Stripes, accompanied by a formal Salute to the Flag, to be recited by the students. As the deadline approached to send the program to press, this one key component remained unwritten. The salute was “the nub of the program,” Bellamy later quipped, “and the nub was the rub.”
A flag salute did exist at the time and was in common use. It had been composed by Colonel George T. Balch, a Civil War veteran and New York City school teacher, who devised it in conjunction with the first Flag Day celebration in 1885. The Balch Salute ran: “I give my heart and my hand to my country—one country, one language, one flag.” At his death in 1895, Balch was “famous for his work in awakening a feeling of patriotism in school children,” according to The New York Times. “His plan was to have flag poles raised on all school houses in the land.”
The Balch Salute had gained some popularity in the public schools. Bellamy, however, dismissed it as “too juvenile.” He and Upham wanted to replace Balch’s constricting text with a salute “of more dignity” that, in Bellamy’s words, “carried more historical meaning.” Amid the frenetic preparations for the October event, Bellamy and Upham had thrown the job of writing the salute back and forth for weeks. Upham tried his hand, jotting drafts at the breakfast table day after day, but the right words didn’t come. Bellamy would later say that his idea for the new salute was a “straight-out vow of allegiance.” The word “allegiance” was a playback to the Civil War, which still seared popular memory.
Eventually there arrived a day in August, the precise date nowhere recorded, when the printer’s press deadline loomed the following morning. Upham and Bellamy stayed late at the Companion that evening. They talked through ideas for the salute over supper at the nearby Thorndike Hotel, then strolled back to the office