The Evolution of the Pledge of Allegiance

In this article in The Synapse, Kelli Marshall traces the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, which was first recited by U.S. students in 1892 in this form:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands – one Nation, indivisible – with Liberty and Justice for all.

Written by Francis Bellamy, a 37-year-old minister, and published in the Boston-based family periodical Youth’s Companion, the Pledge was part of a nationwide school program coinciding with the opening of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Bellamy had three goals:  rekindling patriotism among young Americans; recapturing the heroic purpose of the Civil War years to address dangers facing the nation; and Americanizing thousands of young immigrants arriving from other countries. In his article, Bellamy stipulated that students should stand, face the flag, give a military-style salute, and when they reached “to my Flag” in the Pledge, extend their right hands, palm upward, toward the flag and keep their arms extended until the end. Right afterward, he wanted each class to sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” 

This procedure became commonplace in American schools. Then in 1923 and 1924, the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution persuaded the National Flag Conferences to revise the Pledge so it read like this:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands – one nation, indivisible – with liberty and justice for all.

The idea was to make sure immigrant children knew they were saluting the U.S. flag, not the flag of the country from which they had come. 

In the 1930s, another change was made. Noticing the eerie similarity between the Bellamy arms-extended gesture and the Nazi “Heil Hitler” salute, parent and teacher organizations, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the Red Cross, and other organizations led a movement to have students use a military salute or hold their hands over their hearts. In December 1942, Congress passed an amended Flag Code, requiring that the Pledge “should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.”

A final revision to the Pledge came in 1954, when President Eisenhower, responding to many Americans’ fear of “godless” Soviet Communism, asked Congress to add the words under God. The purpose, he said, was to “reaffirm the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future” and “strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.” Congress made it official, and that’s the form that most American students recite today:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Subsequent court cases have addressed objections from atheists to “under God” and from Jehovah’s Witnesses, who argued that requiring children to recite the Pledge violated their prohibition against venerating a “graven image.” The bottom line: the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects students from being compelled to recite the Pledge in public schools. 

“The Weird History of the Pledge of Allegiance” by Kelli Marshall in The Synapse, September 2, 2015, http://bit.ly/1YCQCzA 

From the Marshall Memo #614