History of The Pledge of Allegiance

Francis Julius Bellamy (May 18, 1855 - August 28, 1931) was a “utopian christian socialist “hired to write the pledge of allegiance to sell flags in 1892 as a premium for subscribing to the then largest circulation magazine Youth Companion where it was first published . He also proposed a salute by extending the right arm toward the flag that was adopted by German National Socialist in the early 20th century. It is interesting to know that Then President Woodrow Wilson in reciting the Pledge also proposed and lead the group in its recitation with that salute.

The Youth’s Companion became a fervent supporter of the schoolhouse flag movement, which aimed to place a flag above every school in the nation. By 1892, the magazine had sold American flags to approximately 26,000 schools. By this time the market was slowing for flags, but was not yet saturated.

His original Pledge read as follows:

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to* the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”

(* ‘to’ was added in October 1892).

The recital was to be accompanied with a salute to the flag known as the Bellamy salute, described in detail by Bellamy. During World War II, the salute was replaced with a hand-over-heart gesture because the original form involved stretching the arm out towards the flag in a manner that resembled the Nazi salute.

In 1954, in response to the perceived threat of secular (Godless ) Communism, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God,” creating the 31-word pledge that is recited today.

Bellamy was a Christian Socialist who “championed ‘the rights of working people and the equal (re)distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus.’” but he was forced to leave his Boston church the previous year because of the socialist bent of his sermons.

Bellamy’s views on immigration and universal suffrage were somewhat less egalitarian. He wrote that “[a] democracy like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world where every man is a lawmaker, every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth; where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another.”