For witch it stands

At our visit to the Oak Hill School, I learned that the American Pledge of Allegiance was not written at the same time as our Constitution. It is not very old; it was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister. Then President Benjamin Harrison liked it and suggested all American school kids recite it. In those days, it read:

I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Some people viewed the pledge as a post-Civil War reminder that the US was a single nation which could not be divided. In 1924, additional words were added, possibly out of a concern that immigrant children be aware which flag they were pledging to:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America...

My father, the son of immigrants, was born in 1910 and remembered that change. He once told me he thought it was silly. "Did they really think I'd say 'Republic of Latvia' under my breath?"

I remember when we became "one nation under God indivisible." This was in 1954, the height of the Cold War. These words were intended to remind us that unlike Russian Communists, Americans were a Godly people. This addition continues to be controversial. I doubt that a child otherwise unexposed to religion could acquire it from the Pledge of Allegiance; but adults can be passionate on either side of this issue.

When I was a small child, I thought the Pledge of Allegiance was great fun. In my first grade class, we had a morning color guard with three little flags the teacher kept in the closet. I thought Pledgallegiance was a game you played with these flags, and I believed "for which it stands" referred my first grade teacher, Mrs. Esterson. She was unpopular and we said she was a "witch." During the pledge, she was always standing.