9781422287545

10 The Pledge of Allegiance: Story of One Indivisible Nation

Bellamy, a former minister who had started working at the Boston magazine a year earlier, wanted Upham to tackle this job. After all, Upham had been responsible for a nationwide movement bringing American flags into every public school. Upham tried several times to write a salute. He often asked his coworkers, including Bellamy, for their opinions. But after months of scrib- bling down words and ideas about his feelings for America, Upham was never satisfied. So he turned to Bellamy for help. On that hot night in August, Bellamy and Upham stayed late at the office talking about the project. Their deadline was drawing close. The colleagues agreed on what they didn’t want their pledge to be. They wanted more than the words that had been written in 1887 as a sort of pledge that said, “We give our heads and our hearts to God and our country; one country, one language, one Flag.” This salute, the men felt, lacked dignity and comprehensiveness, and they thought they could do better. What they wanted was to create a vow of allegiance , written in simple terms that illustrated a vision of patriotism . Over dinner at the Thorndyke Hotel, Bellamy and Upham talked about the idea of pledging allegiance to the flag. Such a pledge would be a promise of loyalty to all that the flag represented: a republic based on liberty and rooted in justice for everyone. Upham, especially, was pleased with the idea of allegiance.