Speaker 1: Great Originals.
Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3: It's October twenty first, eighteen ninety two. Across the United States,
Speaker 3: school kids are gathering for a once in a lifetime
Speaker 3: celebration the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America.
Speaker 3: Of course, Columbus never actually stepped foot on American soil,
Speaker 3: and he went to his grave thinking he really landed
Speaker 3: in India. But that's a topic for another podcast. Back
Speaker 3: to eighteen ninety two. In celebration of this flawed and
Speaker 3: historically inaccurate holiday, then President Benjamin Harrison issues a special proclamation.
Speaker 3: He calls for America's new system of public schools to
Speaker 3: fly the American flag high and proud. As parades of
Speaker 3: Civil War veterans file into school yards across the country,
Speaker 3: students prepare to salute the flag, and not just that,
Speaker 3: they're about to recite a new patriotic oath. They've been
Speaker 3: practicing it every day for a month, just for this
Speaker 3: special occasion. It's only twenty two words long, but it's
Speaker 3: still a mouthful for a bunch of school children. For
Speaker 3: anyone really.
Speaker 4: Ledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which
Speaker 4: it stands. One Nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 3: Sound familiar, Sure, it's missing a few words and phrases.
Speaker 3: Those would come decades later. But that day, October twenty first,
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety two, was the public debut of what we
Speaker 3: all recognize now as the Pledge of Allegiance. The thing is,
Speaker 3: back then, it wasn't called the Capital P Pledge of
Speaker 3: Capital A Allegiance. It wasn't a thing yet in eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety two, no one had an inkling that this short,
Speaker 3: patriotic oath written for a one time event would ever
Speaker 3: be uttered again. As we'll see, the story of the
Speaker 3: Pledge of Allegiance is a story of a nation at
Speaker 3: a crossroads, a nation still healing from the collective trauma
Speaker 3: of the Civil War, a nation experiencing one of the
Speaker 3: largest influxes of immigrants in its history. It was a
Speaker 3: time of tremendous anxiety over what it meant to be
Speaker 3: an American, and the original Pledge, with its twenty two words,
Speaker 3: was supposed to offer an answer. The crazy thing is
Speaker 3: more than one hundred and thirty years later, after reciting
Speaker 3: the Pledge every morning in nearly every classroom in America,
Speaker 3: we still have absolutely no idea who wrote it. Welcome
Speaker 3: to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 3: Danash Schwartz, and this is the pledge. I think one
Speaker 3: thing that's always really surprising to me is discovering how
Speaker 3: these American traditions that seem so ingrained in our country
Speaker 3: are actually far more recent than people realize.
Speaker 5: Oh totally.
Speaker 4: Not only are they more recent, but kind of started
Speaker 4: on a lark as part of a don't no spoilers.
Speaker 4: But there's a magazine at the center of this. All
Speaker 4: three of us come from at one point in our
Speaker 4: careers working at magazine. So good to look back at
Speaker 4: a time when magazines were so dominant in the culture.
Speaker 1: Ah remember those times.
Speaker 3: It's just as so interesting. People have such strong emotional
Speaker 3: feelings to the pledge of allegiance and it really kind
Speaker 3: of was arbitrary.
Speaker 1: Also, in my humble opinion, I think America, we don't
Speaker 1: really need a pledge of allegiance. We should have like
Speaker 1: a national jingle like one of those ads for a
Speaker 1: year in car sale, like come on, grab the freedom,
Speaker 1: let's go.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 3: I will say, if you have a friend who's not
Speaker 3: from the United States, and you tell them that every
Speaker 3: single day in school, every student stands up, puts their
Speaker 3: hand over their hearts and says a pledge to the flag.
Speaker 3: They will look at you like you are absolutely insane.
Speaker 1: Completely like we yell all brainwashed in your cord does Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: isn't it funny how when you dig into any bit
Speaker 1: of American history, even something simple as a pledge of allegiance,
Speaker 1: you will always find a crime.
Speaker 3: There's always a crime. There's always a crime. America in
Speaker 3: the late nineteenth century was having a full blown identity crisis.
Speaker 3: When the pledge was first recited in eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: It was only twenty seven years since the end of
Speaker 3: the Civil War. Young people who had fought in and
Speaker 3: survived the war were now full fledged volts. Families who
Speaker 3: lost loved ones still felt the ripple effect, and the
Speaker 3: American institution of slavery had only recently been formally abolished.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have to keep in mind that an
Speaker 2: entire generation was wiped out in the Civil War. Right
Speaker 2: you think about the number of soldiers who were killed
Speaker 2: in the United States, I mean, those are wounds that
Speaker 2: are not going to heal very quickly.
Speaker 3: That's Charles dorn A historian at Boden College.
Speaker 2: Now we're into eighteen nineties and the war ends in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty five, but it still stings, and the country
Speaker 2: is still trying to figure out how to stitch itself
Speaker 2: back together politically, economically, and socially.
Speaker 3: If recovering from the Civil War wasn't enough, the eighteen
Speaker 3: eighties and eighteen nineties were also a time of unprecedented
Speaker 3: urbanization and immigration. Suddenly, Americans who had been here for
Speaker 3: generations found themselves competing for factory jobs and tenement space
Speaker 3: with millions of new immigrants from places like Italy, Russia,
Speaker 3: and Poland.
Speaker 2: So this is a very different kind of immigration into
Speaker 2: the United States than what people believe existed prior to that.
Speaker 2: The people comprising this wave of immigration are coming from
Speaker 2: a different part of the world. So whereas initially immigration
Speaker 2: in the United States is coming primarily from northern and
Speaker 2: western Europe, now these immigrants are coming from southern and
Speaker 2: Eastern Europe. And what this means is that they're speaking
Speaker 2: different languages, Slavic languages for instance, They're practicing different faiths.
Speaker 3: What if these new arrivals failed to assimilate into American culture,
Speaker 3: What if they openly rebelled against American ideals and institutions.
Speaker 3: Tensions reached a fever pitch, and.
Speaker 2: There's a real fear and a concern on the part
Speaker 2: of resident Americans, Americans already living here, that this could
Speaker 2: somehow dilute America, and it could really sort of mess
Speaker 2: with the national character, and that something has to be
Speaker 2: done to these people in order to essentially make them Americans.
Speaker 3: What exactly do you do to people to make them American? Well,
Speaker 3: the best way to Americanize people, the government decided, was
Speaker 3: through the public schools. Public schools were still a relatively
Speaker 3: new concept in most of the country, but there were
Speaker 3: high hopes that these uniquely American institutions could teach little Italian,
Speaker 3: Slavic and Irish kids to be patriotic and productive Americans.
Speaker 2: There's a sense that these public schools are unlike anything
Speaker 2: else that exists in any nation in the world, and
Speaker 2: they are in some ways sort of symbols of democracy
Speaker 2: and the democratic republic. So there was a real faith
Speaker 2: in fact that public schools could pull off this Americanization
Speaker 2: mission that many people believed needed to have happen in
Speaker 2: order for immigrants to become a part of the national project.
Speaker 3: From the start, the Americanization efforts in public schools centered
Speaker 3: around the flag. Today, it's not really unusual to see
Speaker 3: an American flag flying outside most schools and inside most classrooms,
Speaker 3: but that wasn't always the case. In fact, the main
Speaker 3: reason schools are festooned with flags today dates back to
Speaker 3: this immigration anxiety that gripped Americans. In the eighteen eighties
Speaker 3: and eighteen nineties, there was a nationwide campaign to put
Speaker 3: quote a flag in every schoolhouse. It was spearheaded by
Speaker 3: patriotic civic organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic
Speaker 3: and the Women's Relief Corps. They wanted the flag to
Speaker 3: be a physical symbol of America to which young immigrant
Speaker 3: children could pledge their loyalty.
Speaker 2: And of course, there are national oaths of loyalty in
Speaker 2: many countries at this point in time. In fact, the
Speaker 2: United States is a little bit of an outlier in
Speaker 2: not having one, and so the idea that there might
Speaker 2: be a national statement of loyalty was not a new
Speaker 2: idea or a strange thing whatsoever.
Speaker 3: The very first version of a pledge of allegiance was
Speaker 3: written around eighteen ninety by a New York City education
Speaker 3: reformer and Civil War veteran named George Balch. Bulch wasn't
Speaker 3: a fan of mass immigration. He referred to immigrant school
Speaker 3: children as quote human scum cast on our shores by
Speaker 3: the tidal wave of a vast migration end quote. So
Speaker 3: you know the kind of person we're dealing with, the
Speaker 3: most popular version of Balch's pledge went like this.
Speaker 4: We give our heads and our hearts to God and
Speaker 4: our country, one country, one language, one flag.
Speaker 3: The message was hardly subtle. There was only room in
Speaker 3: America for one type of American god, fearing English speaking
Speaker 3: and unwaveringly loyal to the United States. Balches owede to
Speaker 3: assimilation had a nice little run. It was recited in
Speaker 3: New York public schools well into the twentieth century. But
Speaker 3: obviously that's not the pledge of allegiance that American school
Speaker 3: kids know today, and it was not the pledge that
Speaker 3: was read out during the Columbus Day celebration in eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety two. To hear the story of that pledge, the
Speaker 3: real pledge, we need to travel to Boston. There we'll
Speaker 3: find a former Baptist minister turned magazine editor named Francis Bellamy.
Speaker 3: There he is hunched over his desk, sweating through his
Speaker 3: wool suit, wrestling with the words that would become an
Speaker 3: American institution. It's a swelteringly hot August night in Boston
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety two. Francis Bellamy, a thirty seven year old
Speaker 3: writer and editor, has shut himself away in his office
Speaker 3: at The Youth's Companion, a children's magazine and one of
Speaker 3: the most popular magazines in America. His waste paper bucket
Speaker 3: overflows with false starts, his pencil is ground down to
Speaker 3: a nub. Bellamy's boss, James b Upham, has given him
Speaker 3: an impossible writing assignment. Compose a brief patriotic statement, a
Speaker 3: salute to the American flag that somehow encompasses all of
Speaker 3: America's history and founding principles, and keep it short. Bellamy
Speaker 3: knows about the existing pledge written by George Balch, One Country,
Speaker 3: one language, one Flag, but he dismisses it as too juvenile.
Speaker 3: Bellamy's boss wants something more sweeping and comprehensive, so Bellamy
Speaker 3: racks his brain for a new approach. But how could
Speaker 3: he possibly express the true essence of America in so
Speaker 3: few words? This scene played out in a stuffy Boston
Speaker 3: office will become a watershed moment in Bellamy's life. When
Speaker 3: he writes about it thirty years later, he recounts the
Speaker 3: details like it was yesterday.
Speaker 1: The strain of the next two hours is still a
Speaker 1: distinct memory.
Speaker 3: Very dramatic stuff. Bellamy certainly has a way with words,
Speaker 3: but he wasn't always a writer and editor. Before he
Speaker 3: worked for the Youth's Companion, Bellamy was a Baptist minister,
Speaker 3: but he wasn't your typical fire and brimstone preacher. Bellamy
Speaker 3: and his friends were Christian socialists in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Christian socialists believed that true Christians shouldn't just sit around
Speaker 3: praying and waiting for God to act. Christians should get
Speaker 3: out there and actually try to fix some of society's
Speaker 3: toughest problems. Here's Charles Dorn again.
Speaker 2: And so the Christian Socialists are coming out of this
Speaker 2: kind of belief system that society can act in cooperative
Speaker 2: ways to create systems that will create a kind of
Speaker 2: paradise or kind of heaven on earth.
Speaker 3: Although Bellamy eventually left the ministry, he still wanted to
Speaker 3: help people and improve society. But like a lot of
Speaker 3: good old, homegrown Americans, in the eighteen nineties, Bellamy was
Speaker 3: pretty rattled by the influx of immigrants from Eastern and
Speaker 3: southern Europe.
Speaker 2: There is a real fear, I mean, we shouldn't understand,
Speaker 2: there's a real fear that bringing these people to the
Speaker 2: United States could really destabilize an already destabilized nation. So
Speaker 2: we've got to do something to make sure that that
Speaker 2: doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: Like many others, Bellamy subscribed to the idea that the
Speaker 3: best way to americanize immigrants was through public schools, and
Speaker 3: he found a welcome home for his ideas at the
Speaker 3: Youth's Companion. The Companion was one of the first subscription
Speaker 3: magazines in America. Launched in eighteen twenty seven, It was
Speaker 3: like an early version of Boys Life, stuffed with serialized
Speaker 3: adventure novels, news items, and casually racist reports from around
Speaker 3: the globe. It was a hit with young readers and
Speaker 3: their parents, and every week three hundred and eighty five
Speaker 3: thousand copies were delivered to homes across the country. James B. Upham,
Speaker 3: Bellamy's boss at The Companion, was a deeply patriotic man,
Speaker 3: but he also had magazines to sell. It was Upham's
Speaker 3: idea to get the magazine involved in the flag in
Speaker 3: every schoolhouse movement of the eighteen eighties. The Companion ran
Speaker 3: ads offering American flags to any school that needed one.
Speaker 3: The flags weren't free. A nine foot flag cost the
Speaker 3: equivalent of one hundred and sixty dollars today, but schools
Speaker 3: could recoup their money. The magazine provided flag certificates that
Speaker 3: students could sell to friends and neighbors for about three
Speaker 3: dollars in today's money. Buyers were entitled to quote one
Speaker 3: share in the patriotic influence of the school flag. It
Speaker 3: was an ingenious scheme that paid off handsomely. The Youth's
Speaker 3: Companion sold more than twenty five thousand American flags to
Speaker 3: public schools. Not only did the Companion make a killing,
Speaker 3: but the magazine became synonymous with patriotism. And with this
Speaker 3: pivot to patriotism, the magazine brass wanted to lean heavily
Speaker 3: into their new identity, and just their luck, the perfect
Speaker 3: opportunity came knocking. As I mentioned, eighteen ninety two marked
Speaker 3: the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's historic voyage. Civic organizations
Speaker 3: floated the idea of a national public school celebration and
Speaker 3: the Youth's Companion was chosen by a committee of educators
Speaker 3: to create the actual program that schools would follow during
Speaker 3: the celebration. If the Youth's Companion pulled this off, it
Speaker 3: would sell a crazy amount of magazines.
Speaker 2: So the idea is that the Youth's Companion will propose
Speaker 2: a celebratory program that will take place on a particular weekend,
Speaker 2: and there will literally be like a sequence of activities
Speaker 2: or events or programs that communities can adopt and participate in.
Speaker 2: And one of those is going to be bringing kids
Speaker 2: together at schools and listenings who has some addresses and
Speaker 2: some speeches, and then celebrating by reciting a national pledge.
Speaker 3: A national pledge that was the kicker. James Upham was
Speaker 3: insistent that the Youth's Companion program include a salute to
Speaker 3: the flag. He tried to write one himself a bunch
Speaker 3: of times, but gave up as the date of the
Speaker 3: celebration neared. Upham turned in desperation to his junior employee,
Speaker 3: Francis Bellamy. That's how Bellamy finds himself cloistered in his
Speaker 3: office on a hot August night in eighteen ninety two
Speaker 3: with a deadline looming for the most important part of
Speaker 3: the Columbus Day program, the Salute to the Flag. Bellamy
Speaker 3: sweats it out for a while before finally having his
Speaker 3: first breakthrough. One word allegiance. It means loyalty, faithfulness, obedience, everything.
Speaker 3: Bellamy wants the flag to inspire in immigrant school children,
Speaker 3: and just like that, six fateful words appear at the
Speaker 3: top of the page. Here's what Bellamy wrote about that moment,
Speaker 3: looking back decades later.
Speaker 1: I pledge allegiance to my flag when those first words
Speaker 1: looked up at me from the scratch paper. The start
Speaker 1: appeared promising.
Speaker 4: On a roll.
Speaker 3: Now Bellamy wrestles with the next part. Should it be country,
Speaker 3: nation or republic?
Speaker 1: Republic? One because it distinguished the form of government chosen
Speaker 1: by the fathers and established by the Revolution. The true
Speaker 1: reason for allegiance to the flag is the republic for
Speaker 1: which it stands.
Speaker 3: Next, Bellamy turned to his American heroes, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton,
Speaker 3: and Abraham Lincoln. How would they characterize their beloved republic
Speaker 3: in the wake of a wretching Civil war.
Speaker 1: After many attempts, all that pictured struggle reduced itself to
Speaker 1: three words. One nation, indivisible, to reach that compact brevity was,
Speaker 1: as I recall, the most arduous phase of the task,
Speaker 1: and the discarded experiments at phrasing overflowed the scrap basket.
Speaker 3: Sure he was laying it on a little thick but
Speaker 3: with those words locked in One Nation, indivisible, Bellamy searches.
Speaker 1: For a closer What doctrines, then, would everybody agree upon?
Speaker 1: As the basis of Americanism, Liberty and justice were surely basic,
Speaker 1: were undebatable, and were all that any one nation could
Speaker 1: handle if they were exercised for all. They involved the
Speaker 1: spirit of equality and fraternity. So that final with liberty
Speaker 1: and justice for all came with a cheering rush as
Speaker 1: a clincher. It seemed to assemble the past and to
Speaker 1: promise the future. That I remember is how the sequence
Speaker 1: of the ideas grew, and how the words were found.
Speaker 1: On that August night, with the cooling Boston seabreeze coming
Speaker 1: softly through the open window of my room.
Speaker 3: After two hours of writing, Bellamy had his twenty two
Speaker 3: word national creed. I pledge allegiance to my flag and
Speaker 3: the Republic for which it stands, One nation, indivisible, with
Speaker 3: liberty and justice for all. Bellamy proudly presents his pledge
Speaker 3: to Upham.
Speaker 4: His reaction, Francis, You've written a thing which I believe
Speaker 4: will live long after you and I are dead.
Speaker 3: When the day of the Columbus celebration finally arrives, Bellamy
Speaker 3: is there to witness the very first reciting of his
Speaker 3: Pledge of Allegiance at a boss in high school. He's
Speaker 3: floored when four thousand students roar his words in unison.
Speaker 3: At the top of the episode, I said, we have
Speaker 3: no idea who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, yet we
Speaker 3: just listened to Francis Bellamy's word by word account of
Speaker 3: how he wrote it. So case closed, right, Well, that
Speaker 3: depends who you ask.
Speaker 6: Francis Bellamy insisted that he wrote it in August eighteen
Speaker 6: ninety two, had a very specific story about that, and
Speaker 6: this is a crucial point. He swore out legal affidavits
Speaker 6: telling a detailed story of how he originated it in
Speaker 6: August eighteen ninety two. But the evidence that we now
Speaker 6: have really suggests that he falsified the entire story. I
Speaker 6: think it's impossible to read all the evidence and not conclude.
Speaker 3: That turns out Bellamy's detailed story of a sweltering August night,
Speaker 3: hunched over his desk with an impossible assignment, The arduous
Speaker 3: search for the right words, the Eureka moment spurred by
Speaker 3: patriotic reverence to the founding fathers, Well, it might all
Speaker 3: be a big, fat lie. Cherryvale, Kansas, is a tiny
Speaker 3: farming town about one hundred miles outside of Wichita, a
Speaker 3: flat sea of corn stretching to the horizon. I'm assuming
Speaker 3: I've never been. The year is eighteen ninety, a full
Speaker 3: two years before Francis Bellamy says he wrote the Pledge
Speaker 3: of Allegiance On a hot August night in eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: In small town Cherryvale, the eighth grade teacher gives her
Speaker 3: students an assignment. Like most of her students, the teacher
Speaker 3: is an avid reader of the Youth's Companion, the magazine
Speaker 3: bell And he works at. And the Companion has just
Speaker 3: announced a writing contest for kids. They call it the
Speaker 3: Flag and the Public Schools. The teacher encourages her students
Speaker 3: to enter. She tells them to write a few sentences
Speaker 3: expressing the thoughts that run through their heads when they
Speaker 3: salute the American flag. One winning entry would be chosen
Speaker 3: from each state, and along with bragging rights, their school
Speaker 3: would get a shiny new American flag as a prize.
Speaker 3: Not all of the eighth graders take the assignment seriously,
Speaker 3: but Frank does. Frank is a naturally patriotic kit. He
Speaker 3: likes to read stories about George Washington and the American Revolution.
Speaker 3: The flag really means something to him. He wants to
Speaker 3: become a soldier someday, but like any thirteen year old,
Speaker 3: he struggles to find the right words to express his feelings.
Speaker 3: After weeks of writeaceading, and rewriting, Frank finally has something
Speaker 3: he's proud of. Before mailing his submission off to the magazine,
Speaker 3: he reads it out loud to himself while saluting an
Speaker 3: imaginary American flag.
Speaker 4: I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for
Speaker 4: which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice
Speaker 4: for all.
Speaker 3: Sound familiar. Keep in mind this is eighteen ninety in
Speaker 3: Kansas and Frank is thirteen years old. Months go by,
Speaker 3: but Frank doesn't hear anything from the Youth's companion. He's disappointed,
Speaker 3: but figures the magazine must have received a ton of submissions.
Speaker 3: Maybe his just wasn't good enough. More time passes two
Speaker 3: years to be exact. Now it's eighteen ninety two. School
Speaker 3: kids across the country are preparing for the national public
Speaker 3: school celebration of Columbus Day. Frank is excited. He picks
Speaker 3: up the official program published in The Youth's Companion, and
Speaker 3: he can't believe his eyes. There it is the very
Speaker 3: same pledge he wrote two years ago in eighth grade.
Speaker 3: Word for word, Frank is blown away. How did this happen?
Speaker 3: Did he win the contest but the magazine couldn't find him?
Speaker 3: His own words are in a national magazine. But why
Speaker 3: hadn't he heard from the Companion? There must have been
Speaker 3: some kind of mistake. Frank rushes home after school and
Speaker 3: writes a letter to The Youth's Companion explaining everything. How
Speaker 3: he submitted his pledge for the contest two years ago,
Speaker 3: how there must have been some confusion because no one
Speaker 3: told him that he'd won. He couldn't wait to tell
Speaker 3: his parents. They'd be so proud. A few weeks later,
Speaker 3: a letter finally arrives from the magazine. Frank tears it open,
Speaker 3: holding his breath as he reads the reply.
Speaker 4: All essays, statements, or written matter submitted in this contest,
Speaker 4: she'll remain and is the property of the Youth's Companion magazine.
Speaker 3: What that's it? No congratulations, not even a flag. Didn't
Speaker 3: they understand that he had written the pledge of allegiance.
Speaker 3: That's the last that Frank hears from the Youth's Companion,
Speaker 3: But despite his disappointment, he doesn't lose his love for
Speaker 3: his country. In eighteen ninety eight, he achieves his dream
Speaker 3: of becoming a soldier. He enlists in the army to
Speaker 3: fight in the Spanish American War. While serving in the Philippines,
Speaker 3: he contracts tuberculosis. Frank makes it home but never gets
Speaker 3: his health back. It's a struggle, and he dies a
Speaker 3: few months shy of his fortieth birthday. Frank is buried
Speaker 3: in the Fairview Cemetery back in Cherryvale, Casas. His gravestone
Speaker 3: says nothing about the pledge, just his service in the
Speaker 3: war and his name, Frank Bellamy.
Speaker 4: Hold on, hold on, hold on. This kid's name is
Speaker 4: Frank Bellamy. Yep, as in Francis Bellamy.
Speaker 3: Spelled exactly the same, but it's not.
Speaker 4: The same person. Somehow, Frank isn't short for Francis.
Speaker 3: Nope, Frank Bellamy is a completely different person than Francis Bellamy.
Speaker 3: They're unrelated. They just happen to have the same name,
Speaker 3: and they both claim that they wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.
Speaker 3: That's insane, completely insane, but it's true. Just ask Fred Shapiro.
Speaker 6: The story really gets astonishing when you mentioned Frank E.
Speaker 5: Bellamy.
Speaker 6: If you look in Kansas newspapers and Kansas Historical Society
Speaker 6: website and resolutions that have been passed by the Kansas Legislature.
Speaker 6: In Kansas, they have long believed that Frank E. Bellamy
Speaker 6: wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.
Speaker 3: Fred is the editor of the New Yale Book of Quotations,
Speaker 3: and he is the authoritative source on who said what when.
Speaker 3: As Fred correctly points out, the state of Kansas has
Speaker 3: always backed a different Bellamy, thirteen year old Frank Elmer Bellamy,
Speaker 3: as the true author of the Pledge of Allegiance. As
Speaker 3: recently as twenty fourteen, the Kansas State Senate passed a
Speaker 3: resolution to quote recognize and celebrate Cherryvale, Kansas, and Frank
Speaker 3: Bellamy's authorship of the Pledge of Allegiance. In nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: the citizens of Cherryvale erected a memorial with a photo
Speaker 3: of Frank Bellamy. A small plaque explains how Frank, as
Speaker 3: a school kid, composed the nation's best known patriotic statement.
Speaker 3: But could it be true? Could an eighth grader from
Speaker 3: Kansas have written the original pledge in eighteen ninety and
Speaker 3: could Francis Bellamy and The Youth's Companion have stolen Frank's
Speaker 3: pledge and claimed it as their own. Fred Shapiro thinks
Speaker 3: it's possible.
Speaker 6: They did have a contest. I've looked at the old
Speaker 6: issues of The Youth's Companion. They definitely had a contest.
Speaker 6: The core Frank Bellamy argument is that he sent it
Speaker 6: in as part of this contest, which definitely did happen
Speaker 6: with Youth's Companion. So the part of the anti Francis
Speaker 6: Bellamy argument may be that if Frankie Bellamy did send
Speaker 6: it in, that Francis spell Me plagiarized it and wouldn't
Speaker 6: show anyone the original mission and later claimed it as
Speaker 6: his own. That's the conspiracy theory to deny Frankie bell
Speaker 6: and his priority if he was indeed the first.
Speaker 3: And if it is a conspiracy theory, it's a pretty
Speaker 3: juicy one. Big City Magazine guy steals credit for the
Speaker 3: pledge of allegiance from farm Kit in Kansas, who has
Speaker 3: the exact same name. But does this theory hold up
Speaker 3: to scrutiny. To get some answers, let's take a closer
Speaker 3: look at the writing contest held by the Youth's companion,
Speaker 3: Fred Shapiro is right. In the January ninth, eighteen ninety
Speaker 3: issue of the magazine, there's a call for submissions to
Speaker 3: a contest called the Flag and the Public Schools. But
Speaker 3: something is a little off. The description of the writing
Speaker 3: contest given in the magazine is really different from the
Speaker 3: assignment supposedly given by Frank's teacher. The ad in the
Speaker 3: magazine says.
Speaker 7: Students are invited to write an essay of not more
Speaker 7: than six hundred words in length on the patriotic influence
Speaker 7: of the American flag when raised over the public schools.
Speaker 3: Huh okay. This is very clearly an essay contest with
Speaker 3: a six hundred word limit. It seems a little weird
Speaker 3: that Frank Bellamy would have submitted a single twenty three
Speaker 3: word sentence. To be fair, maybe the pledge portion was
Speaker 3: a part of a longer essay about the importance of
Speaker 3: flags in schools. We don't know. Unfortunately, there are no
Speaker 3: documents or other tangible proof that Frank Bellamy ever submitted
Speaker 3: a pledge to the Youth's Companion in eighteen ninety fast
Speaker 3: forward to nineteen fifty seven. Believe it or not, the
Speaker 3: Library of Congress decided to get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 3: They assigned a researcher to investigate the various authorship claims
Speaker 3: for the pledge of allegiance. James Upham, Bellamy's boss, was
Speaker 3: also in the running, but we don't have time to
Speaker 3: fall down that particular rabbit hole. The Library of Congress investigation,
Speaker 3: all one hundred and forty eight pages of it, concluded
Speaker 3: that the most likely author of the pledge was Francis
Speaker 3: Bellamy of the Youth's Companion. While the report acknowledged some
Speaker 3: doubts about Bellamy's account, it decided, quote.
Speaker 5: Unless one is prepared to believe that Francis Bellamy was
Speaker 5: a deliberate and consciousless liar, the mass of his testimony
Speaker 5: is overwhelmingly in his favor.
Speaker 3: So where does that leave little Frank Bellamy? In a
Speaker 3: short paragraph in the report, the Library of Congress dismissed
Speaker 3: the kid from Kansas as nothing more than a plagiarist.
Speaker 3: It alleged that Frank quote lifted the text from the
Speaker 3: Columbus Day Program and attempted to claim it as his own.
Speaker 3: So much for Frank E. Bellamy, it seemed. But remember
Speaker 3: the Library of Congress report was written in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 3: That was sixty seven years ago. Would you believe that
Speaker 3: new evidence has come to light that puts young Frank
Speaker 3: Bellamy back in the running. A few minutes ago, I
Speaker 3: said there were no surviving documents that corroborated Frank Bellamy's
Speaker 3: story that he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety while a school kid in Kansas. That's not quite
Speaker 3: the case anymore.
Speaker 6: Barry Popic is a retired attorney who has done fantastic
Speaker 6: research on all kinds of questions of priority origination for
Speaker 6: American history. Barry is probably the greatest NewSpace paper researcher
Speaker 6: in the world, and this is a fantastic discovery and
Speaker 6: his part.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty two, Barry Poppeck was searching newspapers dot
Speaker 3: com for the earliest published mention of the Pledge of
Speaker 3: Allegiance when he made a wild discovery. On May twenty first,
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety two, a Kansas newspaper called the Ellis County
Speaker 3: Republican ran a tiny story on page four. It's a
Speaker 3: dispatch from the nearby town of Victoria, Kansas.
Speaker 8: It reads, on April thirtieth, our schools closed with a
Speaker 8: flag raising. The pupils had been drilled to make a
Speaker 8: military salute and to repeat the following words while holding
Speaker 8: the hand at arm's length toward the flag. I pledge
Speaker 8: allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands,
Speaker 8: one nation inseparable with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 3: Francis Bellamy, the adult magazine editor, swore up and down
Speaker 3: that he wrote the pledge of allegiance in August of
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety two. He literally swore multiple legal affidavits to
Speaker 3: that effect. But here, buried in a small town Kansas
Speaker 3: newspaper is irrefutable proof that he didn't. The article says
Speaker 3: that on April thirtieth, eighteen ninety two, school kids in
Speaker 3: Kansas recited an almost identical pledge that's more than three
Speaker 3: months before Francis Bellamy says that he wrote the pledge.
Speaker 3: Who could forget to quote that August night with the
Speaker 3: cooling Boston Sea breeze coming softly through the open window
Speaker 3: of my room. What's more, the only difference between Bellamy's
Speaker 3: pledge and the one that predates it in a Kansas
Speaker 3: newspaper is a single word inseparable instead of india visible.
Speaker 6: How do we explain the fact that the exact same
Speaker 6: words virtually appeared several months earlier in a Kansas newspaper.
Speaker 6: And the thing is in his affidavits, Francis belling me.
Speaker 6: He didn't just say yeah, I think I wrote it
Speaker 6: in eighteen ninety two. He told us very specific story
Speaker 6: where his boss asked him to come up with a
Speaker 6: pledge and he sat down and it was a hot
Speaker 6: day in August. This is not just a question of dates.
Speaker 6: This affects the question of authorship. How could Francis Beelmy
Speaker 6: be the author?
Speaker 3: Good question, Fred, I've got another one for you. This
Speaker 3: article was published in a small town Kansas newspaper. You
Speaker 3: know who else was from a small town in Kansas.
Speaker 3: After all this time, after being ignored by the youth's
Speaker 3: companion and being labeled a pleagiarist by the Library of Congress,
Speaker 3: could thirteen year old Frank E. Bellamy from Cherry Vale,
Speaker 3: Kansas have been telling the truth. Did a kid really
Speaker 3: write the Pledge of Allegiance?
Speaker 6: I can't say that Frankie Bellamy was the originator, but
Speaker 6: he may have been. The fact that he was the
Speaker 6: only person from Kansas, and that this this strong link
Speaker 6: with Kansas, suggests that he may have been the author.
Speaker 3: In a few years, Fred plans to publish a revised
Speaker 3: and updated edition of the New Yale's Book of Quotations.
Speaker 3: He's still on the fence about what to do with
Speaker 3: the entry for the Pledge of Allegiance. He always attributed
Speaker 3: it to Francis Bellamy, editor at the Youth's Companion, just
Speaker 3: like everybody else. Now Fred is considering changing the author
Speaker 3: to anonymous. A long forgotten article in a long forgotten
Speaker 3: Kansas newspaper has called everything into question. Fred can't read
Speaker 3: Francis Bellamy's overwrought descriptions of that hot August night in
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety two, the overflowing waste paper basket, Bellamy racking
Speaker 3: his brains for inspiration, the words finally coming to him
Speaker 3: one by one, each imbued with immense patriotic significance. Fred
Speaker 3: can't read all of that without wondering, was it an
Speaker 3: elaborate fiction. Did Francis Bellamy make the whole story up?
Speaker 3: And if so, who really wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.
Speaker 6: It's a complex story. I can't say for sure who
Speaker 6: the author was, but I do feel that I can
Speaker 6: say that it was not Francis Bellamy, and that it
Speaker 6: appears to me that he essentially fabricated a detailed story
Speaker 6: of how he wrote it, which was not accurate.
Speaker 3: Today, in schools across America, kids start each day by
Speaker 3: standing up, hand over heart and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Speaker 9: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 9: of America, and do the Republic for which it stands,
Speaker 9: one nationship under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 3: The Pledge has gone through some changes since it debuted
Speaker 3: more than one hundred and thirty years ago. The biggest
Speaker 3: was the addition of under God. That was President Dwight D.
Speaker 3: Eisenhower's idea. He wanted to stick it to those godless
Speaker 3: commis in the Soviet Union, so under God was added
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty four. But despite a few new words,
Speaker 3: the job of the Pledge is still very much the
Speaker 3: same as it was in eighteen ninety two to instill
Speaker 3: a spirit of patriotism in the next generation. Meanwhile, we're
Speaker 3: still arguing about what it means to be an American
Speaker 3: until we find an answer, We'll keep saying the Pledge.
Speaker 3: We'll probably never know who really wrote it, but we
Speaker 3: can take its message to heart. Wouldn't it be nice
Speaker 3: if this nation was a little less divided and more indivisible,
Speaker 3: and that liberty and justice were truly for all. One
Speaker 3: of those Bellamy boys was onto something, unless, of course,
Speaker 3: they were both liars. Okay, Saren, I feel like you
Speaker 3: already have casting in mind for this one. Yes, our
Speaker 3: go to casting director.
Speaker 1: You are one hundred percent right. I'm going to put
Speaker 1: on my Hollywood hat for a second. Okay, imagine the
Speaker 1: movie version of this you go to see it, because
Speaker 1: on the poster and in the trailers you have as
Speaker 1: Frank Bellamy, the older one, the adult Paul Rudd, and
Speaker 1: as Kid Bellamy, it's the kid from Young Sheldon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get Young Sheldon here.
Speaker 1: That's perfect, right, He's got the vibe you want for this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little poem writing child, perfect.
Speaker 1: Totally sensitive, loves America. He's in the heartland, looks good
Speaker 1: in a bow tie exactly. Little Geeky really cares.
Speaker 4: I'd see that movie. I would also see the off
Speaker 4: Broadway play version where one person plays both Frank and
Speaker 4: young Frank Bellamy and you just kind of go with
Speaker 4: it and and lean into the insanity that they both yes, yes,
Speaker 4: and if he's unavailable, Paul Dano, it's perfect. How about
Speaker 4: very special character? Did anyone jump out at you to
Speaker 4: to anoint this episode? I'm gonna throw out Fred Shapiro
Speaker 4: while you're thinking yes, from the Book of Quotations, because
Speaker 4: keeping this alive one hundred thirty years later, good for him,
Speaker 4: giving us a nice hook to bring it back to
Speaker 4: the present day as well.
Speaker 1: And he's like the snow dot Com of quotes. We
Speaker 1: need people like him to make sure we get these
Speaker 1: things right. It's like, Okay, here's the real story people.
Speaker 1: Did you know Dana? Do you do you have one?
Speaker 1: Because I have one? But it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a theory.
Speaker 3: I want your theory please.
Speaker 1: Okay. Mine is the anonymous woman who I believe actually
Speaker 1: wrote this pledge. And you're wondering, Zaren, I didn't hear
Speaker 1: any woman in this Where are you coming with this?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: Wow, here's how it goes ready. I think both Bellamies
Speaker 1: were plagiarists because the adult Frank Bellamy clearly he played
Speaker 1: dress from kid Bellamy and Kansas right. But the newspapers
Speaker 1: dot com guy, he finds it two years earlier than that.
Speaker 1: Kid Bellamy apparently allegedly wrote his pledge of allegiance in
Speaker 1: a nearby town in Kansas. Right now, imagine a school
Speaker 1: marm is going between these two towns. She's the one
Speaker 1: who wrote the pledge of allegiance. She teaches these Kansas kids.
Speaker 1: One day, Kid Bellamy sees the contest, he pilfers her pledge.
Speaker 1: She sends it in. Editor Frank Bellamy's like, oh this
Speaker 1: is amazing. He pilfers it from the kid. Both Bellambi's
Speaker 1: they steal the pledge of allegiance from some anonymous school
Speaker 1: marm in Kansas. It's like Virginia Wolf's goold quote about
Speaker 1: the women, which is you know, for most of history
Speaker 1: anonymous was a woman. Did you point out, Jason the
Speaker 1: Yale Book of Quotations they were going to consider listing
Speaker 1: dude is anonymous, And I think dude is a woman
Speaker 1: because it's anonymous. I bet a woman wrote it. That's
Speaker 1: my theory.
Speaker 3: I love this theory. And just a round of applause
Speaker 3: on behalf of all women.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 4: I would have Elizabeth Moss play that.
Speaker 3: Woman in our film, Yes amazing.
Speaker 4: One other quick thing that came to mind while listening
Speaker 4: to this one. We've talked about my dated cultural references
Speaker 4: in the past. The Sports Illustrated football phone was a
Speaker 4: big one growing up, and commercials they would try to
Speaker 4: get people to subscribe to Sports Illustrated by promising this
Speaker 4: phone that looked like a football in this story, like
Speaker 4: the American flag is the original football?
Speaker 1: Og football phone? Oh my god, good connection. Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was such like a leveraged buy for the schools too.
Speaker 1: I mean like it's like, there, let's get these kids
Speaker 1: out there. It's like pushing the chocolate bars. It's like, though,
Speaker 1: like these kids, how are you gonna say no to
Speaker 1: a kid? Let's make him part of capitalism now, Jason,
Speaker 1: are you upset about the death of Sports Illustrated?
Speaker 4: I mean I'm upset whenever I hear the entire publications
Speaker 4: are laying off all their staff. Just uh, just a
Speaker 4: very sad. It feels like it's a little bit of
Speaker 4: a long time coming. It's been a slow death, uh
Speaker 4: time and time again, so hopefully they get back on
Speaker 4: their feet sometime. I'm worried it's gonna be like Toys
Speaker 4: r Us which like nine years ago. They bring it
Speaker 4: back every year and there's some now it's like it's
Speaker 4: in a corner of Macy's or it's there's one store
Speaker 4: and one mall in Houston and uh so, yes, I
Speaker 4: would say it was always in my house growing up
Speaker 4: as a kid. We didn't have a football phone though.
Speaker 5: I see.
Speaker 1: I think that's the mistake. They need to bring back
Speaker 1: the football phone or whatever would be the modern equivalent.
Speaker 1: That's going to save SI because they had the flag boom,
Speaker 1: we need a football phone.
Speaker 4: I think that wraps it up for another very special episode.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 4: This episode was written by Dave Rouse. Our producer is
Speaker 4: Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington, Mixing
Speaker 4: and mastering by Beheid Fraser. Very Special Episodes is hosted
Speaker 4: by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnette and me Jason English. Original
Speaker 4: music by Elise McCoy. Our story editor is Aaron Edwards.
Speaker 4: Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson. Show logo by
Speaker 4: Lucy Quintania. I'd like to thank our excellent voice actors,
Speaker 4: especially two of my three daughters, Kate and Juliette English.
Speaker 4: We couldn't meet Charlotte's asking price, but good work Kate
Speaker 4: and Juliette. And today is Juliette's birthday.
Speaker 1: Happy Birthday.
Speaker 4: No better way to spend your birthday than reading the
Speaker 4: Pledge of Allegiance multiple times into a podcast microphone. So
Speaker 4: Special Day, Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.