The Pledge_ A History of the Pledge of Allegiance - Jeffrey Owen Jones [36]
Between his resignation from the pulpit (1889) and the Columbus Day Celebration (1892), Bellamy traded God for the new Americanism in his proselytizing. During that time, he joined the Lyceum League lecture circuit and addressed large influential groups speaking primarily about “Americanism in the Public Schools.” Key speeches were made to the National Education Association (NEA) and the Women’s Literary Union.
In the NEA speech on July 15, 1892, Bellamy credited Balch’s salute (used in the New York City schools at the time) with having a positive effect on the immigrant children of that city. The salute, he said, made their new country real to these children, and the flag had the power to “Americanize” them.
Bellamy spoke at length about liberty, an American trait that had been “run into the ground,” he said. The problem was not with liberty itself, he argued, but with liberty in the hands of corporate America, which he considered too greedy. Liberty for corporations was not, in Bellamy’s view, “liberty and justice for all.”
That was all well and good. It was when the former preacher began to talk about individual liberties that he drifted off into being what Richard Ellis called a “race conscious nativist.”
“The hard, inescapable fact,” as Bellamy had written, “is that men are not born equal.” His opinion was not unique in America at the time; he was not alone in his apprehension about immigration.
But like Balch before him, Bellamy, while holding and expressing racist beliefs and ethnic prejudice, believed strongly in the transformative power of America and its institutions. He believed that America had the power to elevate peasants, former slaves, and common laborers. Enlightening the poor immigrant using rituals like the flag salute and the Pledge of Allegiance was imperative if the nation was going to maintain control of its ideals.
Though all the elements of the 1892 Columbus Day school celebration were quickly forgotten, except “The Bellamy Pledge,” the event was nevertheless just the beginning of the organizers’ vision of bringing a political socialization program to the public schools. As patriotic fervor in the country increased, the Pledge changed, and as it changed was steadily woven into the fabric of everyday life in America.
During the final decade of the nineteenth century, the flag was transformed into an important patriotic symbol in large part because of the Pledge and the Youth’s Companion efforts to make the Columbus Day celebration a permanent presence in the lives of schoolchildren and adults. The intense emotional build-up before the Spanish American War brought about the informal custom of standing in the presence of the flag as it passed. Momentum continued to build for the school flag movement well into the last decade of the nineteenth century. Wisconsin was the first state to pass a law, in 1889, allowing school boards to purchase flags with public funds, but by 1900, just eleven years later, nineteen states and territories had made flying the flag over a school mandatory.
Just six months after the Columbus Day celebration, on April 25, 1893, James Upham and Francis Bellamy joined William McDowell to help celebrate the installation of his soaring flagpole on the coast of New Jersey. It was the first adult recitation of the Pledge at the National Liberty Pole and Flag Raising Ceremony at the Sandy Hook Navesink Lighthouse, the brightest light on the eastern seaboard, with a broad view of New York Harbor to the north.
The fact that both Upham and Bellamy attended the event was recognition of the role the Youth’s Companion had played in the resurgent flag movement, and Upham was asked to give the key speech at the event. It was short, but had the mark of oratory that echoed the welcome optimism of Emma Lazarus:
America has crossed the threshold