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13 “Come and Hear What I’ve Got!”

recognized the lasting power of his colleague’s effort. “This has been a great night’s work,” Upham said. “I can’t help thinking that this thing you have written will last long after both you and I are dead.” Bellamy was not as confident. It had been part of the day’s work, he would later write, work he had been “heaved” into and that had left him tired. Later, thinking about the pledge, Bellamy wrote: It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards; with the makings of the Constitution . . . with the meaning of the Civil War; with the aspiration of the people . . . The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the ‘repub- lic for which is stands.’ . . . And what does that vast thing, the Republic, mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation—the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must speci- fy that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future? Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, “Liberty, equality, fraternity.” No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doc- trine of liberty and justice for all.

Text-Dependent Questions What was the 1892 National School Celebration? What was it intended to celebrate?

Research Project The word “patriotism” is defined at the start of this chapter. But how does patriotism come into play in your everyday life? Write a one-page essay explaining what patrio- tism is, and what it means to you.