Editing Francis Bellamy

{{short description|American Christian socialist minister (1855–1931)}}
{{other people}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_prefix   = [[The Reverend]]
| name               = Francis Bellamy
| image              = Portrait of Francis Bellamy 01.jpg
| birth_name         = Francis Julius Bellamy
| birth_date         = {{birth date|mf=yes|1855|5|18}}
| birth_place        = [[Mount Morris, New York|Mount Morris]], [[New York (state)|New York]], U.S.
| death_date         = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1931|8|28|1855|5|18}}
| death_place        = [[Tampa]], [[Florida]], U.S.
| resting_place         = [[Rome, New York]], U.S.
| alma_mater          = [[University of Rochester]]
| occupation         = {{hlist | Minister | author | editor}}
| era                = [[Third Great Awakening]]
| known_for          = [[Pledge of Allegiance]]
| movement           = [[Christian socialism]]
}}

'''Francis Julius Bellamy''' (May 18, 1855 – August 28, 1931) was an American [[Christian socialism|Christian socialist]] [[Baptist]] minister and author.<ref name=Mason>{{cite web|url=http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/bellamy_f/bellamy_f.html |title=Grand Lodge of BC and Yukon profile of Bellamy |publisher=Freemasonry.bcy.ca |access-date=2012-11-01}}</ref> He is best known for writing the original version of the [[Pledge of Allegiance]] in 1892.

==Early life==
Francis Julius Bellamy was born on May 18, 1855, in [[Mount Morris, New York]] to Rev. David Bellamy (1806–1864) and Lucy Clark.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ancestry.ca/genealogy/records/francis-julius-bellamy-24-6ctwnp?geo_a=r&geo_s=ca&geo_t=ca&geo_v=2.0.0&o_iid=41016&o_lid=41016&o_sch=Web+Property|title=Francis Julius Bellamy|access-date=28 August 2020}}</ref> His family was deeply involved in the [[Baptists|Baptist]] church and both Francis and his father became ministers.  The family moved to [[Rome, New York]], when Francis was only 5. Here, Bellamy became an active member of the First Baptist Church where his father served as minister until his death in 1864. Francis went on to attend the [[University of Rochester]] in [[Rochester, New York]], where he studied theology and belonged to the [[Alpha Delta Phi]] fraternity.

He became a Baptist minister as a young man.  He was very much influenced by the vestiges of the [[Second Great Awakening]].  He travelled to promote his Baptist faith and lived to be of service to others in his community. Bellamy's travels brought him to Massachusetts where he penned the "Pledge of Allegiance" for a campaign by the ''Youth's Companion'', a patriotic circular and magazine. Bellamy "believed in the absolute [[separation of church and state]]"<ref name="Freethinkers 2004. p. 287">"Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism", Susan Jacoby. Metropolitan Press, 2004. p. 287. {{ISBN|0-8050-7442-2}}</ref> and purposefully did not include the phrase "under God" in his pledge.

==Pledge of Allegiance==
{{Main|Pledge of Allegiance (United States)}}

In 1891, Daniel Sharp Ford, the owner of the ''[[The Youth's Companion|Youth's Companion]]'', hired Bellamy to work with Ford's nephew [[James B. Upham]] in the magazine's premium department. In 1888, the ''Youth's Companion'' had begun a campaign to sell [[Flag of the United States|US flags]] to [[State School|public schools]] as a premium to solicit subscriptions. For Upham and Bellamy, the flag promotion was more than merely a business move; under their influence, the ''Youth's Companion'' became a fervent supporter of the schoolhouse flag movement, which aimed to place a flag above every school in the nation. Four years later, by 1892, the magazine had sold US flags to approximately 26,000 schools. By this time the market was slowing for flags but was not yet saturated.

In 1892, Upham had the idea of using the 400th anniversary of [[Christopher Columbus]] reaching the [[Americas]]&nbsp;/ [[Western Hemisphere]] in 1492 to further bolster the schoolhouse flag movement. The magazine called for a national Columbian Public School Celebration to coincide with the [[World's Columbian Exposition]], then scheduled to be held in [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]], during 1893. A flag salute was to be part of the official program for the [[Columbus Day]] celebration on October 12 to be held in schools all over the US.

The pledge was published in the September 8, 1892, issue of the magazine,<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Bellamy |first1=Francis |title=National School Celebration of Columbus Day |magazine=Youth's Companion |date=8 September 1892 |volume=65 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MTROAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA446 |access-date=8 July 2021}}</ref> and immediately put to use in the campaign. Bellamy went to speak to a national meeting of [[Superintendent (education)|school superintendents]] to promote the celebration; the convention liked the idea and selected a committee of leading educators to implement the program, including the immediate past president of the [[National Education Association]]. Bellamy was selected as the chair. Having received the official blessing of educators, Bellamy's committee now had the task of spreading the word across the nation and of designing an official program for schools to follow on the day of national celebration. He structured the program around a flag-raising ceremony and his pledge.

His original Pledge read as follows:
{{blockquote|I pledge Allegiance to my Flag and to{{efn|The word “to” was in his handwritten original but not the first published version, to which it was added in October 1892.}} the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.}}

The recital was accompanied with a salute to the flag known as the [[Bellamy salute]], described in detail by Bellamy. During [[World War II]], the salute was replaced with a hand-over-heart gesture because the original form involved stretching the arm out towards the flag in a manner identical to the later [[Nazi salute]]. (''For a history of the pledge, see [[Pledge of Allegiance (United States)|Pledge of Allegiance]]'').

In 1954, in response to the perceived threat of secular [[Communism]], [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|President Eisenhower]] encouraged Congress to add the words "under God," creating the 31-word pledge that is recited today.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm |title=The Pledge of Allegiance |publisher=Ushistory.org |access-date=2012-11-01}}</ref>

Bellamy described his thoughts as he crafted the language of the pledge:
{{blockquote|It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]] onwards; with the makings of the Constitution... with the meaning of the [[American Civil War|Civil War]]; with the aspiration of the people...

The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the '[[republic]] for which it stands'. ...And what does that last thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation – the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as [[Daniel Webster|Webster]] and [[Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln]] used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future?

Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the [[French Revolution]] which meant so much to [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] and his friends, '[[Liberté, égalité, fraternité|Liberty, equality, fraternity]]'. No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all...}}

Bellamy "viewed his Pledge as an '[[inoculation]]' that would protect [[immigrant]]s and native-born but insufficiently [[patriotism|patriotic]] Americans from the '[[virus]]' of radicalism and [[subversion]]."<ref name="Reason" />

In February 2022, [[Barry Popik]] tweeted a May 1892 newspaper report from [[Hays, Kansas]], of a school flag-raising on 30 April accompanied by an almost identical pledge.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1892-05-21 |title=Pledge of Allegiance (1892). |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/ellis-county-news-republican-pledge-of-a/96314797/ |access-date=2024-02-02 |work=Ellis County News Republican |pages=4}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Popik |first=Barry |date=24 February 2022 |title="Pledge of Allegiance" on April 30, 1892? |url=https://twitter.com/barrypopik/status/1496783059756195841 |access-date=2 February 2024 |website=X}}</ref> An alternative theory is that the pledge was submitted to an 1890 patriotic competition in ''The Youth's Companion'' by a 13-year-old Kansas schoolboy, coincidentally named Frank E. Bellamy.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Roberts |first=Sam |date=2022-04-02 |title=We Know the Pledge. Its Author, Maybe Not. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/02/us/pledge-of-allegiance-francis-bellamy.html |access-date=2024-02-02 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Based on the inconsistency of the facts, some favor Frank E. Bellamy rather than Francis Bellamy as the originator.

==Political views==
Bellamy was a [[Christian socialist]],<ref name="Mason" /> who "championed 'the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of [[Jesus]].'"<ref name="Reason">{{cite book|last1=Jones |first1=Jeffrey Owen |last2=Meyer |first2= Peter |title=The Pledge: A History of the Pledge of Allegiance |url=https://archive.org/details/pledgehistoryofp0000jone |url-access=registration | publisher =Thomas Dunne Books | date= 2010|isbn=9780312350024 }}{{page needed|date=November 2018}}</ref> In 1891, Bellamy was "forced from his [[Boston]] pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism",<ref name="Freethinkers 2004. p. 287" /> and eventually stopped attending church altogether after moving to Florida, reportedly because of the racism he witnessed there.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://oldtimeislands.org/pledge/pledge.htm |title=The Pledge of Allegiance – A Short History |publisher=Oldtimeislands.org |access-date=2012-11-01 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121106000037/http://www.oldtimeislands.org/pledge/pledge.htm |archive-date=2012-11-06 }}</ref> Francis's career as a preacher ended because of his tendency to describe Jesus as a socialist. In the 21st century, Bellamy is considered an early American [[democratic socialist]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://prospect.org/article/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-and-resurgence-democratic-socialism-america|title=Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Resurgence of Democratic Socialism in America|date=July 3, 2018|first=Peter|last=Dreier|work=[[The American Prospect]]|access-date=September 7, 2018}}</ref>

Bellamy was a leader in the public education movement, the nationalization movement, and the Christian socialist movement. He united his grassroots network to start a [[collective memory]] activism in 1892.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite book|last=Kubal|first=Timothy|title=Cultural Movements and Collective Memory : Christopher Columbus and the Rewriting of the National Origin Myth|date=October 2008|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=Basingstoke, Hampshire, GBR|doi=10.1057/9780230615762|isbn=9780230615762}}</ref>

French philosopher [[Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon|Henri de Saint-Simon]]'s "new Christianity", which stressed using science to tackle poverty, influenced Bellamy and many of the "new St. Simonians." They saw nationalization (de-privatization) and public education as the policy solutions.<ref name="autogenerated1" />

In 1889, Bellamy served as founding vice president and wrote several articles for the [[Society of Christian Socialists]], a grassroots organization founded in Boston. The newspaper ''Dawn'' was run by his cousin [[Edward Bellamy|Edward]] and [[Frances Willard]]. Francis Bellamy wrote about the [[Golden Rule]] and quoted Bible passages that denounced greed and lust for money. He was also chairman of the education committee.<ref name="autogenerated1" />

Bellamy offered public education classes with topics such as "Jesus the socialist",  "What is Christian Socialism?", and "Socialism versus anarchy".  In 1891, Bellamy was asked to write down this last lecture, which called for a strong government and argued that only the socialist economy could allow both the worker and the owner to practice the golden rule. This essay, along with public relations experience, allowed him to coordinate a massive Columbus Day campaign.<ref name="autogenerated1" />

On [[immigration]] and [[universal suffrage]], Bellamy wrote in the editorial of ''[[The Illustrated American]]'', Vol. XXII, No. 394, p.&nbsp;258: "[a] [[democracy]] like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world where every man is a lawmaker, every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our [[citizenship]] is a bane to the commonwealth.”<ref name="Reason" /> And further: "Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock. There are races more or less akin to our own whom we may admit freely and get nothing but advantage by the infusion of their wholesome blood. But there are other races, which we cannot assimilate without lowering our racial standard, which should be as sacred to us as the sanctity of our homes."<ref name="trofrelig">{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/libertyofconscie0000nuss |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/libertyofconscie0000nuss/page/201 201] |quote=There are races more or less akin to our own whom we may admit freely and get nothing but advantage by the infusion of their wholesome blood. |title=Liberty of conscience: in defense of America's tradition of religious equality |year=2008 |publisher=Basic Books |author=Martha Craven Nussbaum |access-date=2013-04-04}}</ref>

==Later life and death==
Bellamy is known to have spent 19 years working in New York City but it is unclear as to when. While living there he would work in the advertising industry. He believed in high pressure advertising and thought that it could also still be truthful at the same time. Advertising was seen by him as a way to create demand for American industrial activities.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=DID YOU KNOW? Francis J. Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag in 1892, lived in Tampa from 1922 until his death in 1931.|url=https://tampapix.com/bellamy.htm|access-date=December 11, 2021|website=TAMPAPIX.COM}}</ref>

Bellamy and his second wife, Marie, moved from New York City to Tampa, Florida in 1922 where he spent the remainder of his life. Starting in 1926 he began to work part time for the [[TECO Energy|Tampa Electric Company]] as advertising manager after persuading the company's management that they needed systemic publicity/advertising he could develop. The [[1930 United States census|1930 United States Census]] recorded him residing at 2926 Wallcraft Avenue. He got fired from his job at Tampa Electric Company on July 15, 1931, and applied for and got a similar job at Tampa Gas Company.<ref name=":0" />

Bellamy died in Tampa on August 28, 1931, at the age of 76. His cremated remains were brought back to New York and buried in a family plot in a cemetery in Rome, New York.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Mount Morris, New York - History|url=http://www.mountmorrisny.com/history/bellamy.htm|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120811074317/http://www.mountmorrisny.com/history/bellamy.htm|archive-date=2012-08-11|access-date=2013-05-27}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=What to do ... Visit Francis Bellamy's Grave|url=http://www.when-in-rome.com/todo/bellamy.php}}</ref>

==Personal life==
Bellamy married Harriet Benton in [[Newark, New York]], in 1881. They had three sons: John, who lived in California; David, who lived in Rochester, New York; and Brewster,<ref name="birth">"Massachusetts Births, 1841-1915," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FXXD-2SG : 11 March 2018), Brewster Bellamy, 17 Feb 1896, Newton, Middlesex, Massachusetts; citing reference ID #v 458 p 342, Massachusetts Archives, Boston; FHL microfilm 1,843,693.</ref><ref name="death">"Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N7YY-BN5 : 10 March 2018), Brewster Bellamy, 19 Feb 1896; citing NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS, v 464 p 340, State Archives, Boston; FHL microfilm 961,519.</ref> who died as an infant. His first wife died in 1918, and he married Marie Morin (1920). His daughter-in-law Rachael (David's wife) lived in Rochester until February/March 1989 when she died at the age of 93. David and Rachael had two children, David Jr. and Peter (1929-2021). His son, John Benton Bellamy, married Ruth "Polly" (née Edwards). They had three children, Harriet (1911&ndash;1999), Barbara (1913&ndash;2005) and John Benton Bellamy, Jr. (1921&ndash;2015).

Bellamy was the cousin of [[Edward Bellamy]] most famous for the utopian novel ''[[Looking Backward]]'', which inspired the formation of [[Nationalist Clubs]] that similarly advocated a certain kind of Christian Socialism.

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
{{wikisource author}}
* [http://undergod.procon.org/view.additional-resource.php?resourceID=78 Francis Bellamy's Companion Address] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130708014409/http://undergod.procon.org/view.additional-resource.php?resourceID=78 |date=2013-07-08 }}
* [http://history.vineyard.net/pledge.htm Profile of Francis Bellamy by Dr J. W. Baer]
* [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=1779 Collection of Bellamy papers, 1890-2002] – River Campus Libraries, [[University of Rochester]]
* {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120301234113/http://www.ncteamericancollection.org/litmap/bellamy_francis_ny.htm|date=March 1, 2012|title=Bellamy profile by Mark Bahr at ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre's American Collection site}}
* {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140307230239/http://www.mountmorrisny.com/history/bellamy.htm|date=March 7, 2014|title=Mount Morris, New York – History: Francis Bellamy and the Pledge of Allegiance}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bellamy, Francis}}
[[Category:1855 births]]
[[Category:1931 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century Baptist ministers from the United States]]
[[Category:20th-century Baptist ministers from the United States]]
[[Category:American Christian socialists]]
[[Category:American democratic socialists]]
[[Category:American political writers]]
[[Category:Baptist socialists]]
[[Category:Baptists from New York (state)]]
[[Category:Bellamyism]]
[[Category:People from Mount Morris, New York]]
[[Category:Pledge of Allegiance]]
[[Category:Religious leaders from Rochester, New York]]
[[Category:University of Rochester alumni]]
[[Category:Writers from Rochester, New York]]
[[Category:Writers from Tampa, Florida]]
[[Category:Clergy from Tampa, Florida]]