Bellamy's travels brought him to Massachusetts where he penned the "Pledge of Allegiance" for a campaign by the Youth's Companion, a patriotic circular and magazine.

Bellamy "believed in the absolute separation of church and state"[3] and purposefully did not include the phrase "under God" in his pledge.

In 1888, the Youth's Companion had begun a campaign to sell US flags to public schools as a premium to solicit subscriptions.

In 1892, Upham had the idea of using the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus reaching the Americas / Western Hemisphere in 1492 to further bolster the schoolhouse flag movement.

In 1954, in response to the perceived threat of secular Communism, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words "under God," creating the 31-word pledge that is recited today.

[5] Bellamy described his thoughts as he crafted the language of the pledge: 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...

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'.

But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all...Bellamy "viewed his Pledge as an 'inoculation' that would protect immigrants and native-born but insufficiently patriotic Americans from the 'virus' of radicalism and subversion.

"[6] In February 2022, Barry Popik tweeted a May 1892 newspaper report from Hays, Kansas, of a school flag-raising on 30 April accompanied by an almost identical pledge.

[7][8] An alternative theory is that the pledge was submitted to an 1890 patriotic competition in The Youth's Companion by a 13-year-old Kansas schoolboy, coincidentally named Frank E.

Bellamy was a Christian socialist,[1] who "championed 'the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus.

'"[6] In 1891, Bellamy was "forced from his Boston pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism",[3] and eventually stopped attending church altogether after moving to Florida, reportedly because of the racism he witnessed there.

[12] French philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon's "new Christianity", which stressed using science to tackle poverty, influenced Bellamy and many of the "new St.

Francis Bellamy wrote about the Golden Rule and quoted Bible passages that denounced greed and lust for money.

In 1891, Bellamy was asked to write down this last lecture, which called for a strong government and argued that only the socialist economy could allow both the worker and the owner to practice the golden rule.

[14] Bellamy and his second wife, Marie, moved from New York City to Tampa, Florida in 1922 where he spent the remainder of his life.