Who wrote the Pledge?

Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance. Bellamy was born on May 18, 1855 in Mount Morris, New York, the son of a Baptist minister, and was educated at the University of Rochester and the Rochester Theological Seminary. He served as a Baptist minister in Massachusetts in the 1880s but left the pulpit in 1891 because his outspoken socialist sermons (he was a leader of the Society of Christian Socialists and supported government action to address industrial inequality) alienated members of his congregation in Boston.

He took an editorial position at the Youth's Companion, a widely circulated family magazine in Boston, where he worked under his cousin Edward Bellamy, the novelist and author of Looking Backward, 2000-1887. In 1892, the magazine and the National Education Association launched a coordinated patriotic program to mark the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage by raising the U.S. flag at every public school in the country and reciting a uniform pledge. Francis Bellamy was given the assignment of writing the pledge.

He drafted it in two hours on the evening of August 1892, deliberately keeping it short enough to be recited in about 15 seconds. The Pledge was first printed in the Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892 and recited by about 12 million children during the National School Celebration on October 21, 1892. Bellamy's original text was: I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. He chose not to include the word equality because he knew it would offend members of state boards of education who opposed equality for women and African Americans.

The Pledge was later modified in 1923 to specify the Flag of the United States, in 1924 to add of America, and on June 14, 1954 to add under God, the version recited at every naturalization ceremony today. Bellamy left the magazine in 1893 over editorial disputes, worked as an advertising executive in New York City, and died in Tampa, Florida on August 28, 1931, at age 76. He is buried in Rome, New York. He never received royalties for the Pledge and was conflicted in his later years about the under God addition (which had not yet happened in his lifetime), but he stated that he believed the Pledge belonged to the country.