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One Nation, Indivisible
10/11/10 | The Wall Street Journal

Behind the Headline
E Pluribus Plures
Winter 2011| Education Next

A “concise and often entertaining” new book on the history of the pledge of allegiance—The Pledge, by Jeffrey Owen Jones and Ed Next’s own Peter Meyer—is reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. The review explains, “The Pledge was the brainchild of Francis Bellamy, a 36-year-old Baptist minister who worked at the Youth’s Companion. It was included in the magazine’s suggested school program for the first Columbus Day, along with a reading of President Benjamin Harrison’s proclamation of the holiday, the singing of “America,” the reciting of a prayer and a patriotic oration. At the time, no one thought that the Pledge—then known as the “salute to the flag”—would last beyond the 1892 event.”  In the Winter 2010 issue of Ed Next, Nathan Glazer reviews another new book about patriotism, Patriotic Pluralism, by Jeff Mirel.