Pledge of Allegiance, Opened the Chicago World’s Fair
Christian socialist and Baptist minister Francis Bellamy originally wrote the Pledge of Allegiance for The Youth’s Companion to improve an 1885 Pledge written by Civil War veteran George Balch. Bellamy believed Balch’s Pledge be too simple and undignified.
To counter this, Bellamy originally published his version of the Pledge in The Youth’s Companion, a magazine campaigning to get a flag into every school in the USA (which, in a not-so-shocking coincidence, the magazine happened to be selling). The Youth’s Companion campaigned to increase flag sales by tying it to the opening of the 1893 World’s Fair, itself a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in America.
