The Pledge of Allegiance From 1892 to Under God, and the Fights Along the Way

Ask a room of Americans who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance and you will get a few confident guesses: the Founders, perhaps, or Lincoln, or a committee of Congress. The truth is better. The Pledge was written in 1892 by a Baptist minister working for a family magazine, as part of a school celebration the magazine promoted. Congress did not adopt it until 1942, and it did not say what it says now until 1954.

That is not a scandal. It is the way living traditions work. Nobody carved the Pledge in stone at Philadelphia. It was written, rewritten, argued over and finally settled, and every change tells us something about the country that made it. Let me walk you through the story in order, with the dates, because the dates are where the surprises are.

Where it began: 1892

The magazine was The Youth's Companion, a popular publication for young readers. In 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage, the magazine promoted a National School Celebration to be held on Columbus Day, October 12. They wanted a short ceremony for the schoolchildren of the country, with a flag raising, a salute and a recitation. The man assigned to write the recitation was Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and a staff member of the magazine. The text appeared in the magazine's issue of September 8, 1892.

Bellamy's original read: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands—one Nation indivisible—with Liberty and Justice for all."

Count the words. There are twenty-two, and they pack in more than most speeches. Allegiance is a loyalty. Republic is a form of government, and the word is worth lingering on, because the pledge is made to the republic for which the flag stands, not to the flag as an object and not to any leader. One Nation indivisible is a phrase that carries the memory of the Civil War, barely a generation past. Liberty and Justice for all is as close as we have to a creed. Nobody in the text promises obedience to a ruler. The pledge is to a form of government, which is exactly the thing the Founders cared about.

The recitation was accompanied by a salute. As the children said the words, they saluted the flag with the right arm extended toward it. That gesture, which came to be called the Bellamy salute, will matter in a moment.

The 1923 and 1924 changes: naming the flag

For thirty years the words stayed fixed, though the Pledge spread through schools and fraternal groups. Then there was a problem that sounds funny but was real. A great many immigrants were reciting the Pledge, and the organisers of the National Flag Conference of 1923, the same gathering that wrote the first flag etiquette, worried that a newcomer saying "my flag" might have a different flag in mind. Old Glory's Rules, What the Flag Code Says and Why Most of Us Break It tells the story of that conference and the Code it produced.

The conference changed "my Flag" to "the Flag of the United States." A year later, in 1924, the next conference added the words "of America." So the text became: "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 lesson is a lovely one, and it has a joke inside it. The Pledge was edited to make sure that nobody was left guessing which flag, and which country, was being promised. It is a reminder that patriotism requires a particular object. You cannot be loyal to everywhere. The 1923 change says: this country, this flag, this republic. That is not an insult to anyone else's country. It is the plain meaning of a promise.

1942: the salute that had to go

On June 22, 1942, Congress passed a joint resolution codifying the flag customs, and the Pledge was given official standing for the first time. But a problem had come up. By the early 1940s the Bellamy salute, with the arm stretched out, looked uncomfortably like the salute used by the fascist regimes of Europe. In the years when Americans were being asked to fight those regimes, the resemblance was awkward, to put it mildly, and nobody wanted to be caught pledging allegiance in the enemy's posture.

Congress amended its law on December 22, 1942, to specify that civilians should say the Pledge with the right hand over the heart. The extended arm was retired. It is a small but telling episode: a gesture that had been innocent in 1892 was dropped in 1942 because its meaning had changed, and the nation changed the gesture rather than letting it stand for the wrong thing. Here is a country adjusting its own ceremony to protect its own meaning.

Notice, too, what happened in between. In 1943 the Supreme Court decided West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, holding that no schoolchild can be compelled to say the Pledge. The recitation was made official in 1942, and a year later the Court made it voluntary. A nation that cares about both patriotism and liberty built both into its law within twelve months. Barnette's Fixed Star, Reading the 1943 Opinion on the Pledge Passage by Passage reads that opinion passage by passage.

1954: "under God"

The best-known change came in 1954, in the middle of the Cold War. Here the story has several threads.

The phrase "under God" did not originate in 1954. Lincoln used it at Gettysburg in 1863, hoping "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." Some church and fraternal groups had been adding the words to the Pledge on their own, and the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic fraternal order, adopted the wording for its own meetings in the early 1950s. The campaign for an official change came to a head in 1954.

On February 7, 1954, the Rev. George Docherty, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, preached a sermon about the Pledge. President Eisenhower was in the congregation.

Congress acted quickly. The resolution passed both houses, and on June 14, 1954, Flag Day, President Eisenhower signed it into law. The Pledge now read: "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." In a statement on signing it, the President said the change would strengthen the spiritual weapons that he saw as the country's most powerful resource.

Why did it matter to the people who pushed it? The argument was historical. The Declaration of Independence says that men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." The idea that rights come from God, not from governments, is the foundation of the American claim against tyranny. If rights come from the state, the state may take them away. If they come from a Creator, no government can lawfully touch them. In a Cold War against a state that officially denied God, the addition seemed to say what America was for. From a Civil War coin to the Pledge, how 'under God' entered public life tells the longer story of the phrase in American public life.

The objections, stated fairly

The change drew objections then and has drawn them since, and a fair account gives them a hearing.

The strongest objection is this. The Pledge is recited by schoolchildren in public schools, often led by teachers, and the addition of "under God" puts the government's voice behind a religious claim. A child who does not believe in God, or whose faith differs, is made to stand in a room where the state has declared a theological view. Believers who hold that religion should be kept free from government interference have made this argument as often as atheists have. They note that the First Amendment's first clause forbids Congress to make a law "respecting an establishment of religion."

There is also a historical objection. The original Pledge of 1892 did not have the phrase, and the addition was prompted by a particular political moment. Is a reference to God better understood as a Cold War slogan than as a timeless truth?

The replies are also serious. The first is that the phrase describes a historical fact and a political theory, not a sectarian creed. The Declaration, which was written by a group of people with very different private views of religion, speaks of a Creator, and the Founders did not think that language established a church. The second is that Barnette already guarantees that no one has to say the words. A child who stays silent, or who says the Pledge but omits two words, is protected by the Constitution. The third is that the phrase is a statement about the source of rights, in the language that the country has used from the beginning, and ceremonial references of that kind have been part of public life for a long time.

I think the reply carries the day, mostly because of the second point: the protection of the objector is the thing that makes the ceremony acceptable. A voluntary Pledge with two words in it that some people dislike is a smaller imposition than it might sound, and a compulsory one without them would be a far larger one. Reasonable people differ, and I would rather see them differ in a free country than agree in an unfree one.

2004: Elk Grove v. Newdow

The question reached the Supreme Court in the early 2000s. In 2002 the Ninth Circuit, in a case brought by Michael Newdow, a father in California, held that the school district's policy of leading the Pledge with the words "under God" violated the Establishment Clause. The Supreme Court took the case.

On June 14, 2004, the Court decided Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow. The ruling was on a narrow ground, and the narrowness is the whole story. Justice Stevens, writing for the Court, held that Newdow lacked standing to sue on behalf of his daughter. Newdow did not have custody of the child. Her mother, who did, had no objection to the Pledge, and under California law the father could not litigate in her name over her mother's wishes. Justice Scalia took no part in the decision, and the lower court's judgment was reversed.

Three justices, Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O'Connor and Thomas, concurred in the judgment and would have held the Pledge policy constitutional. The majority did not reach the question. So the Court never held that the words "under God" in a school Pledge are constitutional, and never held that they are not. It held that this plaintiff could not bring the case. As a matter of constitutional law, the question has remained open, and a reader who wants to follow later cases should look at the dockets themselves.

This is a typical Court story. The most dramatic controversy produced the most technical ruling. And note that the date, June 14, 2004, was Flag Day again, a fact the headline writers enjoyed.

What the story teaches

Here are the lessons I draw, in the form of a short numbered argument, because even a host should be able to count.

1. Traditions are made by people. The Pledge was written by a magazine man and edited by a conference and Congress. That does not make it less valuable. Most of what we cherish was made by someone.
2. Changes follow meaning. The flag was named in 1923 because a country needed to say which country. The salute was changed in 1942 because its meaning had shifted. "Under God" was added in 1954 because a nation was defining itself against an enemy. Each edit answered the hour.
3. Freedom is built in. The same decade that made the Pledge official made it voluntary. That is the American way: affirm the loyalty and protect the dissenter.
4. The debate is not over, and it is not a threat. People who disagree about two words are arguing about something they take seriously. A country where the argument is conducted in courts, classrooms and churches is healthier than one where it is forbidden.

The Pledge takes a few seconds to say. Most of us have said it thousands of times and thought about it a handful. It is worth thinking about now and then: what indivisible meant to the generation of 1892, who had buried hundreds of thousands of the Civil War's dead, what liberty and justice for all has meant to the people who held the country to it. For a believer's case for the loyalty the Pledge expresses, see loving your country is not idolatry, a believer's case for patriotism.

The case in brief

1. Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge in 1892 for a schoolchildren's celebration of the Columbus anniversary, and the first text read "my Flag and the Republic," with the Bellamy salute.
2. The 1923 and 1924 conferences named "the Flag of the United States of America," and in 1942 Congress made the Pledge official and replaced the extended arm with the hand over the heart.
3. In 1954 Congress added "under God," and Elk Grove v. Newdow (2004) was decided on standing without settling the constitutional question.
4. Barnette (1943) ensures the Pledge is voluntary, which is what makes it a promise instead of a performance.
5. Each change reflects its moment, and the argument over it is a sign of a free country, not a sign of decline.

What you can do: read the Pledge's current text in Title 4 of the United States Code, say it with your family, and talk about what each phrase means to you.