HEROES: Upham Furled

I pledge allegiance to my Flag*

And to the Republic for which it stands,

One Nation indivisible

With Liberty and justice for all.

U. S. moppets—stimulated by Chicago’s Columbian Exposition and promotional propaganda of the Youth’s Companion—first chanted these immortal words on the first official Columbus Day, in 1892. For over 40 years, however, there has been no certainty who wrote them.

One of the posthumous claimants was Francis Bellamy, who, in 1892, was an editorial employe of the Youth’s Companion in Boston. Mr. Bellamy unquestionably did a job of propaganda to revive patriotic fervor and incidentally stimulated the thriving circulation of the Companion (then in its heyday: circulation around 488,000). To the day of his death in 1931 (aged 75), Francis Bellamy insisted that he wrote The Pledge.

James B. Upham, whom Mr. Bellamy later recalled as an “inspiring old patriot,” was a junior partner in the Companion. After James Upham died in 1905, The Upham Family Association of Maiden, Mass, announced that he had prepared the original draft, that Francis Bellamy was only one of several Companionate contributors to the final version. As president of the U. S. Flag Association, Colonel James A. Moss, U. S. A. retired, in 1930 approved the Upham claim.

About to erect a $30,000 memorial to James Upham in Washington, the Order of Jobs’ Daughters of Portsmouth, Va. recently asked Colonel Moss to say that again. Job’s Daughters, aged 13 to 20, “band together girls for spiritual and moral upbuilding, to teach love of country and flag . . . home, parents and elders.” Just to be sure, he asked Historians Charles C. Tansill (America Goes to War), Bernard Mayo (Henry Clay) and Political Scientist W. Reed West to check up on him. That caution probably cost Patriot Upham a sumptuous monument. Last week Colonel Moss penitently announced that Francis Bellamy wrote The Pledge.

*The words “My Flag” were changed in 1923 to “the Flag of the United States,” so that immigrant children could not get their flags mixed.