A Malden Socialist Wrote 'The Pledge of Allegiance' | Only In MA

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I grew up in Melrose, and I was always told the Pledge of Allegiance every public school kid in America recited every morning had been written in my hometown by James B. Upham, a 19th century publisher. It was a noteworthy, if not trivial, point of Melrose pride, and over the years I heard it repeated so often around town it became, in my mind, a fact.

So I immediately got defensive when a Patch reader in Colorado left a comment on a story claiming she grew up in a house in Malden where the Pledge was written, not by Melrose's James B. Upham, but by Upham's partner, Francis Bellamy.

Turns out Charlene Collins, the Patch reader in Colorado, was right, and all those long-since-retired Roosevelt School teachers were wrong.

"James's partner after much debate, was given the full credit for writing The Pledge, but our Victorian still stubbornly with pride is considered historic by the Malden historical society," Collins wrote in her comment. "I believe it is because one town over in Melrose, the Upham family is well known for a long time in Melrose history."

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Indeed — there's even an Upham Street in Melrose.

Upham had a role in popularizing the Pledge, and, in a 1942 New York Times article about his funeral, he was referred to as the sole author. Upham also led the charge to get American flags flown over schools and, in a single year, sold 25,000 flags to schools at cost as part of his Pledge push. But over the years, historians have firmly sided with the version of the story where Bellamy wrote the Pledge while living at Upham's home in Malden in 1892.

"At the beginning of the nineties patriotism and national feeling was (sic) at a low ebb. The patriotic ardor of the Civil War was an old story," Bellamy said shortly before his death in 1931. "The time was ripe for a reawakening of simple Americanism and the leaders in the new movement rightly felt that patriotic education should begin in the public schools."

Bellamy was an American Christian socialist minister and author from New York who dismissed an earlier version of the Pledge, written in 1887 by George Thatcher Balch as "too juvenile and lacking in dignity." He took Balch's original Pledge:

"We give our heads and hearts to God and our country; one country, one language, one flag!"

and turned it into:

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The brevity was on purpose: Bellamy believed the Pledge should be to the point and should be recited in 15 seconds or less. Bellamy was a socialist and originally wanted to use "equality and fraternity" instead of "liberty and justice." But he backed down, fearing the words would prevent the Pledge from gaining widespread adoption. He and Upham, after all, were trying to get schools to adopt the Pledge, and superintendents on his committee opposed equality for women and Black people.

"It was my thought that a vow of loyalty or allegiance to the flag should be the dominant idea. I especially stressed the word 'allegiance'," Bellamy said. "Beginning with the new word allegiance, I first decided that 'pledge' was a better school word than 'vow' or 'swear'; and that the first person singular should be used, and that 'my' flag was preferable to 'the.'"

"My flag" was eventually changed to "the flag" as waves of immigrants arrived in the U.S. and schools enrolled more foreign-born students — a change Bellamy didn't like, despite his occupation, because it threw off the rhythm. The other significant change, the addition of "under God," came in 1948 after a push by Louis Albert Bowman, an attorney from Illinois, and the Illinois Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.

The Bellamy Pledge was first published in the Sept. 8, 1892 edition of The Youth Companion, a popular children's magazine at the time, as part of its National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day. And the Pledge itself was seen more a part of Upham's flag-flying push, not as a stand-alone goal.

Bellamy and Upham lobbied hard for the Pledge's acceptance. They got a flag ceremony included as part of the 1892 Chicago World's Fair. They enlisted the National Education Association to support their movement, and on June 29, 1892 they got Congress and President Benjamin Harrison to proclaim a flag ceremony that included the Pledge as part of the ceremonies to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage.

So Upham was a crucial player in popularizing the Pledge of Allegiance. He just didn't write it.

Dave Copeland is Patch's regional editor for Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island and can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).