BRAVE NEW WORLD

I note that the United States Pledge of Allegiance was first uttered on the 8^th September 1892. It has a curious history, not only in its origins but also in the various small changes that were made over the years before it was finally settled by a Joint Resolution of Congress on the 14^th June 1954.

It was conceived and written by a socialist and promoted as a marketing tool to sell a children’s magazine and the American flag. How strange is that? Not at all when you consider American capitalism.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy who was a Baptist minister, a Christian socialist, and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy. The original "Pledge of Allegiance" was published in the 8^th September issue of the popular children's magazine The Youth’s Companion as part of the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. The event was conceived and promoted by James B. Upham, a marketer for the magazine, as a campaign to instil the idea of American nationalism by selling flags to public schools and magazines to students.

Bellamy's original Pledge read as follows:

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

The Pledge was supposed to be quick and to the point. Bellamy designed it to be recited in 15 seconds. As a socialist, he had initially considered using the words equality and fraternity but decided against it - knowing that the state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans. I wonder whether he ever regretted that pitiful capitulation to prejudice, but then, as an American Baptist minister, he most probably felt the same way. ‘Indivisible with liberty and justice for all’ was already pushing it, equality and fraternity smacked of the worst excesses of the French Revolution, and we all know what that unfortunate movement led to.

The Pledge was first used in public schools on 12^th October 1892, during Columbus Day observances organized to coincide with the opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. It went through a series of changes and caused some controversy as of result of the inclusion of the words ‘under God’

Herewith the changes:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (8^th September 1892)

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." (1892-1923)

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." (1923-1924)

"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."(1924-1954)

"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." (1954)

It took sixty two years to add the completed phrase 'to the United States of America under God' to something that started out as a piece of copywriting to get kids to buy a flag to wave at a fare on Columbus Day in Chicago.

O, wonder! 
    

How many goodly creatures are there here! 
    

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, 
    

That has such people in't!