Pledge of Allegiance

The first version was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army officer in the Civil War who later authored a book on how to teach patriotism to children in public schools.

[5][6][7] In 1892, Francis Bellamy revised Balch's verse as part of a magazine promotion surrounding the World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas.

[14] The Supreme Court has ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that students cannot be compelled to recite the Pledge, nor can they be punished for not doing so.

[4]Historians point to surges in American patriotic oaths and pledges to the flag after the Civil War, when tensions surrounding political loyalties persisted, and in the 1880s, as rates of immigration increased dramatically.

The event was 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.

According to Miller, Upham "would often say to his wife: 'Mary, if I can instill into the minds of our American youth a love for their country and the principles on which it was founded, and create in them an ambition to carry on with the ideals which the early founders wrote into The Constitution, I shall not have lived in vain.

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.

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.

"[27] The publication's efforts paid off when Benjamin Harrison declared Wednesday, October 12, 1892, to be Columbus Day for which The Youth's Companion made "an official program for universal use in all the schools.

'"[27] Bellamy considered the words "country, nation, or Republic," choosing the last as "it distinguished the form of government chosen by the founding fathers and established by the Revolution.

"[27] Bellamy then reflected on the sayings of Revolutionary and Civil War figures, and concluded, "All that pictured struggle reduced itself to three words, one Nation indivisible.

[12] The discovery was made by the noted amateur lexicographer Barry Popik, who collaborated with Fred Shapiro, an associate library director at the Yale School of Law.

[40][41] In 1951, the Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization, also began including the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The National Fraternal Congress meeting in Boston on September 24, 1952, adopted a similar resolution upon the recommendation of its president, Supreme Knight Luke E. Hart.

On February 7, 1954, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower sitting in Lincoln's pew, Docherty, the church's pastor, delivered a sermon based on the Gettysburg Address entitled "A New Birth of Freedom."

In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource, in peace or in war.

This salute instructed students to stand with their right hand outstretched toward the flag, the fingers of which are then brought to the forehead, followed by being placed flat over the heart, and finally falling to the side.

As a result, the US Congress stipulated that the hand-over-the-heart gesture would instead be rendered by civilians during the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem, thereby replacing the Bellamy salute.

[47] Attached to bills passed in Congress in 2008 and then in 2009 (Section 301(b)(1) of title 36, United States Code), language was included which authorized all active duty military personnel and all veterans in civilian clothes to render a proper hand salute during the raising and lowering of the flag, when the colors are presented, and during the National Anthem.

[51][52] It was sung for the first time on the floor of the House of Representatives on Flag Day, June 14, 1955, by the official Air Force choral group the "Singing Sergeants".

Justice Robert H. Jackson, writing for the 6 to 3 majority, went beyond simply ruling in the precise matter presented by the case to say that public school students are not required to say the Pledge on narrow grounds, and asserted that such ideological dogmata are antithetical to the principles of the country, concluding with: If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

The first case was in 1935, when two children, Lillian and William Gobitis, ages ten and twelve, were expelled from the Minersville, Pennsylvania, public schools that year for failing to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

[65] The issue was finally settled in favor of the Witnesses by the 1943 Supreme Court ruling, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.

Citing the precedent of the 2002 ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Karlton issued an order stating that, upon proper motion, he would enjoin the school district defendants from continuing their practices of leading children in pledging allegiance to "one Nation under God.

[67] As a result of that decision, a Florida school district was ordered to pay $32,500 to a student who chose not to say the pledge and was ridiculed and called "unpatriotic" by a teacher.

[68] In 2009, a Montgomery County, Maryland, teacher berated and had school police remove a 13-year-old girl who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom.

[69] On March 11, 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance in the case of Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District.

[70] Judge Stephen Reinhardt dissented, writing that "the state-directed, teacher-led daily recitation in public schools of the amended 'under God' version of the Pledge of Allegiance... violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

[77] In May 2014, Massachusetts' highest court ruled that the pledge does not discriminate against atheists, saying that the words "under God" represent a patriotic, not a religious, exercise.

[78] In February 2015 New Jersey Superior Court Judge David F. Bauman dismissed a lawsuit, ruling that "… the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the rights of those who don't believe in God and does not have to be removed from the patriotic message.