" Frederick Douglass was at that point, 1878, already fed up with Lost Cause arguments about what The War had been about.
He was also already, early in the process, fed up with the ways in which Americans were beginning to reconcile this bloody, terrible conflict around the mutual valor of soldiers...
"The Civil War"--this is Frederick Douglass--"was not a fight between rapacious birds and ferocious beasts, a mere display of brute courage and endurance, it was a war between men of thought, as well as of action, and in dead earnest for something beyond the battlefield."
He went on and on and on then to declare that the war had been about ideas, and he described the difference between those ideas, as he put it, was the difference between, quote, "barbarism and civilization."
I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.
Original language of the pledge as first used at the dedication of the World's Fair Grounds in Chicago, Illinois (October 21, 1892), the four hundredth anniversary of the Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas and the first celebration of Columbus Day, which had been proclaimed by the U.S. president and made a national holiday by the U.S. Congress; published in The Youth's Companion (September 8, 1892), p. 446.
No individual author was named; the program bore the names of the executive committee, including the chairman, Francis Bellamy.
A story in The Youth's Companion (December 20, 1917, p. 722), credits the authorship of the pledge to James B. Upham with the assistance of the 1892 committee, but in 1939 a scholarly committee of the United States Flag Association studied the question of authorship and "decided that to Francis Bellamy unquestionably belongs the honor and distinction of being the author of the original Pledge to the Flag". Margarette S. Miller, I Pledge Allegiance (1946), p. 162–69.
Also, Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag (1955), p. 4, House Doc. 84–225.
The wording of the 1892 pledge was originally the twenty-two words above, but the word "to" preceding "the Republic" was added immediately after the first celebration.
The First National Flag Conference, 1923, altered the wording from "my Flag" to "the Flag of the United States," and the following year the Second National Flag Conference added "of America" to that phrase.—Miller, op. cit., p. 156–58.
Public Law 79–287, December 28, 1945, made this officially the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
Public Law 83–396, signed on Flag Day, June 14, 1954, added the phrase "under God".
“The pledge excludes so many Americans who are vital to making this country what it is,” Obama said. “Asking someone to pledge their allegiance to our country excludes Jehovah’s Witnesses, Amish, Muslims, and many others whose religious beliefs prohibit strong displays of nationalism. By calling this ‘one nation under God’, we exclude the millions of hard working atheists and agnostics who call America home. By saying ‘liberty and justice for all’, we ignore the grievances of millions of Hispanics, African Americans and Muslims who feel they have neither liberty nor justice.”
Obama told reporters that he believes the inclusion of “under God” runs afoul of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. He summed up his press briefing by challenging congress to create a new pledge that more accurately reflects America’s values.
“I am willing to rescind my decision here today and allow the Pledge of Allegiance back into the schools if we can all agree on the creation of a new Pledge, something that is includes everyone’s beliefs and not just the belief of one nationality or faith.”
" In 1861 southern leadership, at least until after Fort Sumter, argued every day and every way that they were about the business of preserving a slave society--a civilization based on slave labor, a racial system ordered by slavery--now threatened by these anti-slavery black Republicans.
In the wake of the Civil War, however, so much energy will be exercised, not only by southerners, over time, to try to convince the American people and the rest of the world that this event was not about slavery.
In a speech in 1878--like many other speeches he gave in the last third of his life--Frederick Douglass was at that point, 1878, already fed up with Lost Cause arguments about what the war had been about.
He was also already, early in the process, fed up with the ways in which Americans were beginning to reconcile this bloody, terrible conflict around the mutual valor of soldiers, and in his view forgetting what the whole terrible thing might have even been about. And at the end of a magnificent speech he gave at a veterans reunion he said this:
"The Civil War"--this is Frederick Douglass--"was not a fight between rapacious birds and ferocious beasts, a mere display of brute courage and endurance, it was a war between men of thought, as well as of action, and in dead earnest for something beyond the battlefield."
He went on and on and on then to declare that the war had been about ideas, and he described the difference between those ideas, as he put it, was the difference between, quote, "barbarism and civilization."
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