We pledge allegiance to our flag, extolling the virtues of our nation, under God, indivisible, and forever dedicated to liberty and justice for all.
But we didn’t always swear this oath; we didn’t always recognize the influence of God in the uniqueness of our nation. We do, largely because of the dedication of one man…and America’s desire to set itself apart from its enemies.
This is the Forgotten History of the New Pledge.
Louis Bowman was a true patriot. A lawyer by trade, his passions were for his country and his God, and he combined them into his volunteer work as chaplain for the Illinois chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution.
He was a student of American history and was particularly fond of another lawyer from Illinois: Abraham Lincoln. He spent hours studying his idol’s brilliant speeches, especially the Gettysburg Address, which he committed to memory.
The last line captivated him, and he quoted it often.
“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,” Lincoln said, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Whenever he delivered this line at Sons of the American Revoluion gatherings, Louis delighted in the quizzical looks fellow students of history would give him.
“Under God?” they would ask. “Did Lincoln really say, ‘This nation, under God?’”
He did, Louis assured them. Newspaper reporters in attendance for the speech reported the line, and even though just two of the surviving five original manuscripts included “under God,” Louis was convinced that Lincoln envisioned the nation they both loved as divinely blessed.
Lincoln believed, as Louis did, that Judeo-Christian values formed the basis of the American experiment and were thus inextricably linked to its government and culture—most notably in its ideal that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.
Louis was so inspired by Lincoln’s reference to “one nation, under God,” that when he rose to recite the Pledge of Allegiance during the Sons of Liberty meeting on Lincoln’s birthday, February 12th, 1947, he inserted the line into it.
The Pledge of Allegiance as it was written at the time dated back to 1892, Baptist minister Francis Bellamy had composed a pledge of allegiance that read “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” During the Flag Conference of 1923, new language was added so that the influx of new immigrants would know which flag they were pledging allegiance to, so the opening line was changed to “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.”
When Louis recited his pledge, he ended it with “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The Sons of the Revolution loved it, and Louis reveled in explaining to anyone who would ,
The Sons of the Revolution and began using it at all of their events. Other Catholic groups started, too, and as the Cold War was ramping up, people across America wanted to differentiate our nation with the godless statism of the Soviet Union.
Eventually, their efforts made their way to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and on Flag Day 1954, he issued a proclamation officially changing the Pledge of Allegiance to the version Louis Bowman had recited.
“From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.... 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.”