The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited…

September 1892 CE

The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited in the United States on September 8, 1892.

The Pledge of Allegiance, in its original wording, had been composed in August 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855–1931), who was a Baptist minister, a Christian socialist, and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850–1898).

There does exist a previous pledge created by Captain George T. Balch, a veteran of the Civil War, who later became auditor of the New York Board of Education.

Balch is a proponent of teaching children, especially those of immigrants, loyalty to the United States, even going so far as to write a book on the subject and work with both the government and private organizations to distribute flags to every classroom and school.

Balch's pledge, which predates Bellamy's by five years, has beenembraced by many schools, by the Daughters of the American Revolution until the 1910s, and by the Grand Army of the Republic until the 1923 National Flag Conference, is often overlooked when discussing the history of the Pledge.

Bellamy, however, did not approve of the pledge as Balch had written it, referring to the text as "too juvenile and lacking in dignity."

The Bellamy "Pledge of Allegiance" is first published in the September 8 issue of the popular children's magazine The Youth's Companion as part of the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, a celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas.

The event had been conceived and promoted by James B. Upham, a marketer for the magazine, as a campaign to instill the idea of American nationalism in students and to encourage children to raise flags above their schools.

The Pledge was supposed to be quick and to the point.

Bellamy had designed it to be recited in fifteen seconds.

As a socialist, he had initially also considered using the words equality and fraternity but decided against it, knowing that the state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans.

As the World's Columbian Exposition was set to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas, Upham had sought to link the publication's flag drive to the event, "so that every school in the land ... would have a flag raising, under the most impressive conditions.."

Bellamy had been placed in charge of this operation and was soon lobbying "not only the superintendents of education in all the States, but [he] also worked with governors, Congressmen, and even the President of the United States."

Francis Bellamy and Upham had lined up the National Education Association to support the Youth's Companion as a sponsor of the Columbus Day observance and the use in that observance of the American flag.

By June 29, 1892, Bellamy and Upham had arranged for Congress and President Benjamin Harrison to announce a proclamation making the public school flag ceremony the center of the Columbus Day celebrations

This arrangement is formalized when Harrison issues Presidential Proclamation 335.

Subsequently, the Pledge will first be used in public schools on October 12, 1892, during Columbus Day observances organized to coincide with the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition (the Chicago World's Fair), Illinois.