totse.com | The Strange Origin of the Pledge of Allegiance
The Strange Origin of the Pledge of Allegiance
by John W. Baer
Every class day over 60 million public and parochial school teachers and students in the United States recite the Pledge of Allegiance along with thousands of Americans at official meetings of the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Elks, Masons, American Legion, and others. During the televised bicentennial celebration of the United States Constitution for the school children on September 17, 1987, the children as a group did not recite any part of the Constitution. However, President Reagan did lead the nation's school children in reciting the Pledge. Yet probably not one of them knows the history or original meaning of the Pledge.
In the presidential campaign of 1988, George Bush successfully used the Pledge in his campaign against Mike Dukakis. Ironically, Bush did not seem to know the words of the Pledge until his campaign manager told him to memorize it. The teachers and students in the New England private schools he attended, Greenwich Country Day School and Phillips Andover Academy, did not recite the pledge. By contrast, Dukakis and his mother, a public school teacher, recited the Pledge in the public schools. Yet Bush criticized Dukakis for vetoing a bill in Massachusetts requiring public school teachers but not private school teachers to recite the Pledge. Dukakis vetoed the bill on grounds that it violated the constitutional right of free speech.
How did this Pledge of Allegiance to a flag replace the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights in the affections of many Americans? Among the nations in the world, only the U.S.A. and the Philippines, imitating the U.S.A., have a pledge to their flag. Who institutionalized the Pledge as the cornerstone of American patriotic programs and indoctrination in the public and parochial schools?
In 1892, a socialist named Francis Bellamy created the Pledge of Allegiance for "Youth's Companion," a national family magazine for youth published in Boston. The magazine had the largest national circulation of its day with a circulation around 500,000. Two liberal businessmen, Daniel Ford and James Upham, his nephew, owned "Youth's Companion."
One hundred years ago the American flag was rarely seen in the classroom or in front of the school. Upham changed that. In 1888, the magazine began a campaign to sell American flags to the public schools. By 1892, his magazine had sold American flags to about 26 thousands schools.[1]
In 1891, Upham had the idea of using the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America to promote the use of the flag in the public schools. The same year, the magazine hired Daniel Ford's radical young friend, Baptist minister, Nationalist, and Christian Socialist leader, Francis Bellamy, to help Upham in his public relations work. Bellamy was the first cousin of the famous American socialist, Edward Bellamy. Edward Bellamy's futuristic novel, "Looking Backward," published in 1888, described a utopian Boston in the year 2000. The book spawned an elitist socialist movement in Boston known as "Nationalism," whose members wanted the federal government to nationalize most of the American economy. Francis Bellamy was a member of this movement and a vice president of its auxiliary group, the Society of Christian Socialists.[2] He was a Baptist minister and he lectured and preached on the virtues of socialism and the evils of capitalism. He gave a speech on "Jesus the Socialist" and a series of sermons on "The Socialism of the Primitive Church." In 1891, he was forced to resign from his Boston church, the Bethany Baptist church, because of his socialist activities. He then joined the staff of the "Youth's Companion."[3]
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