It's October twenty first, eighteen ninety two.

Across the United States, school kids are gathering for a once in a lifetime celebration the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America.

Of course, Columbus never actually stepped foot on American soil, and he went to his grave thinking he really landed in India.

But that's a topic for another podcast.

Back to eighteen ninety two.

In celebration of this flawed and historically inaccurate holiday, then President Benjamin Harrison issues a special proclamation.

He calls for America's new system of public schools to fly the American flag high and proud.

As parades of Civil War veterans file into school yards across the country, students prepare to salute the flag, and not just that, they're about to recite a new patriotic oath.

They've been practicing it every day for a month, just for this special occasion.

It's only twenty two words long, but it's still a mouthful for a bunch of school children.

For anyone really.

Pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and Justice for.

All sound familiar.

Sure, it's missing a few words and phrases.

Those would come decades later.

But that day, October twenty first, eighteen ninety two, was the public debut of what we all recognize now as the Pledge of Allegiance.

The thing is, back then, it wasn't called the Capital P Pledge of Capital A Allegiance.

It wasn't a thing yet in eighteen ninety two, no one had an inkling that this short, patriotic oath written for a one time event would ever be uttered again.

As we'll see, the story of the Pledge of Allegiance is a story of a nation at a crossroads, a nation still healing from the collective trauma of the Civil War, a nation experiencing one of the largest influxes of immigrants in its history.

It was a time of tremendous anxiety over what it meant to be an American, and the original Pledge, with its twenty two words, was supposed to offer an answer.

The crazy thing is more than one hundred and thirty years later, after reciting the Pledge every morning in nearly every classroom in America, we still have absolutely no idea who wrote it.

Welcome to very special episodes and iHeart original podcast.

I'm your host, Danas Schwartz and this is the Pledge.

Welcome back to very special episodes.

I'm Jason English and today we've got a rerun.

This was our fourth ever episode.

It's one of my favorites.

It's a deep dive into who actually wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.

It feels like a good week to reshare it now.

If you've been with us from the very beginning and you've already heard this story, let me recommend another new podcast which launches today.

It's called American History Hotline with Bob Crawford of the Abitt Brothers band.

Bob has been soliciting history questions on his social media and then he goes out and finds and interviews the experts to get the answers.

It's a really fun show.

Bob is a wonderful human with such a warm and calming presence, very smart guy, and our team's really excited for this one.

So go subscribe to American History Hotline and if you don't know the story of the Pledge, keep listening.

America in the late nineteenth century was having a full blown identity crisis when the Pledge was first recited in eighteen ninety two.

It was only twenty seven years since the end of the Civil War.

Young people who had fought in and survived the war were now full fledged adults.

Families who lost loved ones still felt the ripple effect, and the American institution of slavery had only recently been formally abolished.

I mean, we have to keep in mind that an entire generation was wiped out in the Civil War.

Right you think about the number of soldiers who were killed in the United States, I mean, those are wounds that are not going to heal very quickly.

That's Charles Dorn, a historian at Boden College.

Now we're into eighteen nineties and the war ends in eighteen sixty five, but it still stings, and the country is still trying to figure out how to stitch itself back together politically, economically, and socially.

If recovering from the Civil War wasn't enough, the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties were also a time of unprecedented urbanization and immigration.

Suddenly, Americans who had been here for generations found themselves competing for factory jobs and tenement space with millions of new immigrants from places like Italy, Russia, and Poland.

So this is a very different kind of immigration into the United States than what people believe existed prior to that.

The people comprising this wave of immigration are coming from a different part of the world.

So whereas initially immigration in the United States is coming primarily from northern and western Europe, now these immigrants are coming from southern and eastern Europe.

And what this means is that they're speaking different languages, Slavic languages for instance, They're practicing different faiths.

What if these new arrivals failed to assimilate into American culture, what if they openly rebelled against American ideals and institutions.

Tensions reached a fever pitch.

And there's a real fear and a concern on the part of resident Americans, Americans already living here that this could somehow dilute America and it could really sort of mess with the national character, and that something has to be done to these people in order to essentially make them Americans.

What exactly do you do to people to make them American?

Well, the best way to americanize people, the government decided was through the public schools.

Public schools were still a relatively new concept in most of the country, but there were high hopes that these uniquely American institutions could teach little Italian, Slavic, and Irish kids to be patriotic and productive Americans.

There's a sense that these public schools are unlike anything else that exists in any nation in the world, and they are in some ways sort of symbols of democracy and the democratic republic.

So there was a real faith in fact that public schools could pull off this Americanization mission that many people believed needed to happen in order for immigrants to become a part of the national project.

From the start, the Americanization efforts in public schools centered around the flag.

Today, it's not really unusual to see an American flag flying outside most schools and inside most classrooms, but that wasn't always the case.

In fact, the main reason schools are festooned with flags today dates back to this immigration anxiety that gripped Americans.

In the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties.

There was a nationwide campaign to put quote a flag in every schoolhouse.

It was spearheaded by patriotic civic organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic and the Women's Relief Corps.

They wanted the flag to be a physical symbol of America to which young immigrant children could pledge their loyalty.

And of course, there are national oaths of loyalty in many countries at this point in time.

In fact, the United States is a little bit of an outlier in not having one, and so the idea that there might be a national statement of loyalty was not a new idea or a strange thing whatsoever.

The very first version of a pledge of allegiance was written around eighteen ninety by a New York City education reformer and Civil War veteran named George Bulch.

Bulch wasn't a fan of mass immigration.

He referred to immigrant school children as quote human scum cast on our shores by the tidal wave of as migration end quote.

So you know the kind of person we're dealing with, the most popular version of Balch's pledge went like this.

We give our heads and our hearts to God and our country, one country, one language, one flag.

The message was hardly subtle.

There was only room in America for one type of American God fearing English speaking and unwaveringly loyal to the United States.

Balches owed to Assimilation had a nice little run.

It was recited in New York public schools well into the twentieth century.

But obviously that's not the pledge of allegiance that American school kids know today, and it was not the pledge that was read out during the Columbus Day celebration in eighteen ninety two.

To hear the story of that pledge, the real pledge, we need to travel to bas There we'll find a former Baptist minister turned magazine editor named Francis Bellamy.

There he is hunched over his desk, sweating through his wool suit, wrestling with the words that would become an American institution.

It's a swelteringly hot August night in Boston eighteen ninety two.

Francis Bellamy, a thirty seven year old writer and editor, has shut himself away in his office at The Youth's Companion, a children's magazine and one of the most popular magazines in America.

His waste paper bucket overflows with false starts.

His pencil is ground down to a nub.

Bellamy's boss, James B.

Upham, has given him an impossible writing assignment.

Compose a brief patriotic statement, a salute to the American flag, that somehow encompasses all of America's history and founding principles, and keep it short.

Bellamy knows about the existing pledge written by George Balch, One Country, one language, one Flag, but he dismisses it as too juvenile.

Bellamy's boss wants something more sweeping and comprehensive, so Bellamy racks his brain for a new approach.

But how could he possibly express the true essence of America in so few words?

This scene, played out in a stuffy Boston office will become a watershed moment in Bellamy's life.

When he writes about it thirty years later, he recounts the details like it was yesterday.

The strain of the next two hours is still a distinct memory.

Very dramatic stuff.

Bellamy certainly has a way with words, but he wasn't always a writer and editor.

Before he worked for the Youth's Companion, Bellamy was a Baptist minister, but he wasn't your typical fire and brimstone preacher.

Bellamy and his friends were Christian socialists in the nineteenth century, Christian Socialists believed that true Christians shouldn't just sit around praying and waiting for God to act.

Christians should get out there and actually try to fix some of society's toughest problems.

Here's Charles Dorn again.

And so the Christian Socialists are coming out of this kind of belief system that society can act in cooperative ways to create systems that will create a kind of paradise or kind of heaven on earth.

Although Bellamy eventually left the ministry, still wanted to help people and improve society.

But like a lot of good old, homegrown Americans in the eighteen nineties, Bellamy was pretty rattled by the influx of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe.

There is a real fear, I mean, we shouldn't understate it, there's a real fear that bringing these people to the United States could really destabilize an already destabilized nation.

So we've got to do something to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Like many others, Bellamy subscribed to the idea that the best way to americanize immigrants was through public schools, and he found a welcome home for his ideas at the youth's Companion.

The Companion was one of the first subscription magazines in America.

Launched in eighteen twenty seven.

It was like an early version of Boys Life, stuffed with serialized adventure novels, news items, and casually racist reports from around the globe.

It was a hit with young readers and their parents, and every week three hundred and eighty five thousand copies were delivered to homes across the country.

James b Uppham, Bellamy's boss at The Companion, was a deeply patriotic man, but he also had magazines to sell.

It was Upham's idea to get the magazine involved in the flag in every schoolhouse movement of the eighteen eighties.

The Companion ran ads offering American flags to any school that needed one.

The flags weren't free.

A nine foot flag cost the equivalent of one hundred and sixty dollars today, but schools could recoup their money.

The magazine provided flag certificates that students could sell to friends and neighbors for about three dollars in today's money.

Buyers were entitled to quote one share in the patriotic influence of the school flag.

It was an ingenious scheme that paid off handsomely.

The Youth's Companion sold more than twenty five thousand American flags to public schools.

Not only did the Companion make a killing, but the magazine became synonymous with patriotism.

And with this pivot to patriotism, the magazine brass wanted to lean heavily into their new identity, and just their luck, the perfect opportunity came knocking.

As I mentioned, eighteen ninety two marked the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's historic voyage.

Civic organizations floated the idea of a national public school celebration, and the Youth's Companion was chosen by a committee of educators to create the actual program that schools would followed during the celebration.

If the Youth's Companion pulled this off, it would sell a crazy amount of magazines.

So the idea is that the Youth's Companion will propose a celebratory program that will take place on a particular weekend, and there will literally be like a sequence of activities or events or programs that communities can adopt and participate in, and one of those is going to be bringing kids together at schools and listenings who has some addresses and some speeches, and then celebrating by reciting a national pledge.

A national pledge that was the kicker.

James Upham was insistent that the youth's Companion program include a salute to the flag.

He tried to write one himself a bunch of times, but gave up.

As the date of the celebration neared.

Upham turned in desperation to his junior employee, Francis Bellamy.

That's how Bellamy finds himself cloistered in his office on a hot August night in eighteen ninety two, with a deadline looming for the most important part of the Columbus Day program, the salute to the Flag.

Bellamy sweats it out for a while before finally having his first breakthrough.

One word allegiance.

It means loyalty, faithfulness, obedience, everything.

Bellamy wants the flag to inspire in immigrant school children, and just like that, six fateful words appear at the top of the page.

Here's what Bellamy wrote about that moment, looking back decades later, I.

Pledge allegiance to my flag when those first words looked up at me from the scratch paper.

The start appeared.

Promising on a roll.

Now Bellamy wrestles with the next part.

Should it be country, nation or republic?

Republic?

One because it distinguished the form of government chosen by the fathers and established by the Revolution.

The true reason for allegiance to the flag is the republic for which it stands.

Next, Bellamy turns to his American heroes, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln.

How would they characterize their beloved republic in the wake of a wretching civil war?

After many attempts, all that pictured struggle reduced itself to three words, one nation indivisible.

To reach that compact brevity was, as I recall, the most arduous phase of the task, and the discarded experiments at phrasing overflowed the scrap basket.

Sure he was laying it on a little thick but with those words locked in one Nation indivisible, Bellamy searches for a closure.

What doctrines, then, would everybody agree upon?

As the basis of Americanism, liberty and justice were surely basic, were undebatable, and were all that any one nation could handle if they were exercised.

For all they involved the spirit of equality and fraternity.

So that final line, with liberty and justice for all came with a cheering rush as a clincher.

It seemed to assemble the past and to promise the future.

That I remember is how the sequence of the ideas grew, and how the words were found.

On that August night, with the cooling Boston sea breeze coming softly through the open window of my room.

After two hours of writing, Bellamy had his twenty two word national creed.

I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Bellamy proudly presents his pledge to Upham.

His reaction, francis, You've written a thing which I believe will live long after you and I are dead.

When the day of the Columbus celebration finally arrives, Bellamy is there to witness the very first reciting of his Pledge of Allegiance at a Boston high school.

He's floored when four thousand students roar his words in unison.

At the top of the episode, I said, we have no idea who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, yet we just listened to Francis Bellamy's word by word account of how he wrote it.

So case closed, right, Well, that depends who you ask.

Francis Bellamy insisted that he wrote it in August eighteen ninety two, had a very specific story about that, and this is a crucial point.

He swore out legal affidavits telling a details el story of how he originated in August eighteen ninety two.

But the evidence that we now have really suggests that he falsified the entire story.

I think it's impossible to read all the evidence and not conclude.

That turns out Bellamy's detailed story of a sweltering August night, hunched over his desk with an impossible assignment, the arduous search for the right words, the Eureka moment spurred by patriotic reverence to the founding fathers, Well, it might all be a big, fat lie.

Cherryvale, Kansas is a tiny farming town about one hundred miles outside of Wichita, a flat sea of corn stretching to the horizon.

I'm assuming I've never been.

The year is eighteen ninety, a full two years before Francis Bellamy says he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance On a hot August night in eighteen ninety two in small town Cherry Vale, the eighth grade teacher gives her students an assignment.

Like most of her students, the teacher is an avid reader of The Youth's Companion, the magazine Bellamy works at, and the Companion has just announced a writing contest for kids.

They call it The Flag and the Public Schools.

The teacher encourages her students to enter.

She tells them to write a few sentences expressing the thoughts that run through their heads when they salute the American flag.

One winning entry would be chosen from each state, and along with bragging rights, their school would get a shiny new American flag as a prize.

Not all of the eighth graders take the assignment seriously, but Frank does.

Frank is a naturally patriotic kid, likes to read stories about George Washington and the American Revolution.

The flag really means something to him.

He wants to become a soldier someday, but like any thirteen year old, he struggles to find the right words to express his feelings.

After weeks of writing and rewriting, Frank finally has something.

He's proud of Before mailing his submission off to the magazine, he reads it out loud to himself while saluting an imaginary American flag.

I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Sound familiar.

Keep in mind this is eighteen ninety in Kansas and Frank is thirteen years old.

Months go by, but Frank doesn't hear anything from the Youth's Companion.

He's disappointed, but figures the magazine must have received a ton of submissions.

Maybe his just wasn't good enough.

More time passes two years to be exact.

Now it's eighteen ninety two.

School kids across the country are preparing for the national public school celebration of Columbus Day.

Frank is excited.

He picks up the official program published in the Youth's Companion and he can't believe his eyes.

There it is the very same pledge he wrote two years ago in eighth grade.

Word for word, Frank is blown away.

How did this happen?

Did he win the contest but the magazine couldn't find him?

His own words are in a national magazine, But why hadn't he heard from the Companion.

There must have been some kind of mistake.

Frank rushes home after school and writes a letter to the Youth's Companion explaining everything, how he submitted his pledge for the contest two years ago, how there must have been some confusion because no one told him that he'd won.

He couldn't wait to tell his parents.

They'd be so proud.

A few weeks later, a letter finally arrives from the magazine.

Frank tears it open, holding his breath as he reads the reply.

All essays, statements, or written matters submitted in this contest.

She'll remain and is the property of the Youth's Companion magazine.

What that's it?

No congratulations, not even a flag.

Didn't they understand that he had written the pledge of allegiance.

That's the last that Frank hears from the Youth's Companion, But despite his disappointment, he doesn't lose his love for his country.

In eighteen ninety eight, he achieves his dream of becoming a soldier.

He enlists in the army to fight in the Spanish American War.

While serving in the Philippines, he contracts tuberculosis, Frank makes it home but never gets his health back.

It's a struggle, and he dies a few months shy of his fortieth birthday.

Frank is buried in the Fairview Cemetery back in Cherryvale, Kansas.

His gravestone says nothing about the Pledge, just his service in the war and his name, Frank Bellamy.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

This kid's name is Frank Bellamy.

Yep, as in Francis Bellamy.

Spelled exactly the same.

But it's not the same person.

Somehow, Frank isn't short for Francis.

Nope, Frank Bellamy is a completely different person than Francis Bellamy.

They're unrelated.

They just happen to have the same name, and they both claim that they wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.

That's insane, completely insane, but it's true.

Just ask Fred Shapiro.

The story really gets astonishing when you mentioned Frank E.

Bellamy.

If you look in Kansas newspapers and Kansas Historical Society website and resolutions that have been passed by the Kansas Legislature.

In Kansas, they have long believed that Frank E.

Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.

Fred is the editor of the New Yale Book of Quotations, and he is the authoritative source on who said what when.

As Fred correctly points out, the state of Kansas has always backed a different Bellamy, thirteen year old Frank Elmer Bellamy, as the true author of the Pledge of Allegiance.

As recently as twenty fourteen, the Kansas State Senate passed a resolution to quote, recognize and celebrate Cherryvale, Kansas, and Frank Bellamy's authorship of the Pledge of Allegiance.

In nineteen ninety six, the citizens of Cherryvale erected a memorial with a photo of Frank Bellamy.

A small plaque explains how Frank, as a school kid, composed the nation's best known patriotic statement.

But could it be true?

Could an eighth grader from Kansas have written the original pledge in eighteen ninety and could Francis Bellamy and the Youth's Companion have stolen Frank's pledge and claimed it as their own.

Fred Shapiro thinks it's.

Possible they did have a contest.

I've looked at the old issues of Youth Companion.

They definitely had a contest.

The core Frank Bellamy argument is that he sent it in as part of this contest, which definitely did happen with Youth's companion.

So the part of the anti Francis Bellmy argument may be that if Frankie Bellmy did send it in, that Francis spell Me plagiarized it and wouldn't show anyone the original submission and later claimed it as his own.

That's the conspiracy theory to deny Frankie Bellamy his priority if he was indeed the first.

And if it is a conspiracy theory, it's a pretty juicy one.

Big City magazine guy steals credit for the pledge of allegiance from farm Kit in Kansas, who has the exact same name.

But does this theory hold up to scrutiny.

To get some answers, let's take a closer look at the writing contest held by the Youth's companion.

Fred Shapiro is right.

In the January ninth, eighteen ninety is of the magazine, there's a call for submissions to a contest called the Flag and the Public Schools.

But something is a little off.

The description of the writing contest given in the magazine is really different from the assignment supposedly given by Frank's teacher.

The ad in the magazine says.

Students are invited to write an essay of not more than six hundred words in length on the patriotic influence of the American flag when raised over the public schools.

Huh okay.

This is very clearly an essay contest with a six hundred word limit.

It seems a little weird that Frank Bellamy would have submitted a single twenty three word sentence.

To be fair, maybe the pledge portion was a part of a longer essay about the importance of flags in schools.

We don't know.

Unfortunately, there are no documents or other tangible proof that Frank Bellamy ever submitted a pledge to The Youth's Companion in eighteen ninety.

Fast forward to nineteen fifty seven.

Believe it or not, the Library of Congress decided to get to the bottom of this.

They assigned a researcher to investigate various authorship claims for the pledge of allegiance.

James Upham, Bellamy's boss, was also in the running, but we don't have time to fall down that particular rabbit hole.

The Library of Congress investigation all one hundred and forty eight pages of it concluded that the most likely author of the pledge was Francis Bellamy of the Youth's Companion.

While the report acknowledged some doubts about Bellamy's account, it decided, quote.

Unless one is prepared to believe that Francis Bellamy was a deliberate and consciousless liar, the mass of his testimony is overwhelmingly in his favor.

So where does that leave little Frank Bellamy?

In a short paragraph in the report, the Library of Congress dismissed the kid from Kansas as nothing more than a plagiarist.

It alleged that Frank quote lifted the text from the Columbus Day Program and attempted to claim it as his own.

So much for Frank E.

Bellamy, it seemed.

But remember, the Library of Congress report was written in nineteen fifty seven.

That was sixty seven years ago.

Would you believe that new evidence has come to light that put young Frank Bellamy back in the running?

A few minutes ago, I said there were no surviving documents that corroborated Frank Bellamy's story that he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in eighteen ninety while a school kid in Kansas.

That's not quite the case anymore.

Very popic is.

It's a retired attorney who has done fantastic research on all kinds of questions of priority origination for American history.

Barry is probably the greatest newspaper researcher in the world, and this is a fantastic discovery on his part.

In twenty twenty two, Barry Poppek was searching newspapers dot com for the earliest published mention of the pledge of allegiance when he made a wild discovery.

On May twenty first, eighteen ninety two, a Kansas newspaper called the Ellis County Republican ran a tiny story on page four.

It's a dispatch from the nearby town of Victoria, Kansas.

It reads, on April thirtieth, our schools closed with a flag raising.

The pupils had been drilled to make a military salute and to repeat the following words while holding the hand at arm's length toward the flag.

I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation inseparable with liberty and justice for all.

Remember Francis Bellamy the adult magazine editor swore up and down that he wrote the pledge of allegiance in August of eighteen ninety two.

He literally swore multiple legal affidavits to that effect.

But here, buried in a small town Kansas newspaper is irrefutable proof that he didn't.

The article says that on April thirtieth, eighteen ninety two, school kids in Kansas recited an almost identical pledge that's more than three months before Francis Bellamy says that he wrote the pledge.

Who could forget to quote that August night with the cooling Boston seabreez coming softly through the open window of my room.

What's more, the only difference between Bellamy's pledge and the one that predates it in a Kansas newspaper is a single word inseparable instead of indivisible.

How do we explain the fact that the exact same words virtually appeared several months earlier in a Kansas newspaper?

And the thing is in his affidavits.

Francis Bellamy, he didn't just say yeah, I think I wrote it in August eighteen ninety two.

He told us very specific story where his boss asked him to come up with a pledge, and he sat down and it was a hot day in August.

This is not just a question of dates.

This affects the question of authorship.

How could Francis Spelmy be the author?

Good question, Fred, I've got another one for you.

This article was published in a small town Kansas newspaper.

You know who else was from a small town in Kansas.

After all this time, after being ignored by the youth's companion and being labeled a plagiarist by the Library of Congress, could thirteen year old frank E.

Bellamy from Cherryvale, Kansas have been telling the truth?

Did a kid really write the Pledge of Allegiance?

I can't say that Frankie Bellamy was the originator, but he may have been.

The fact that he was the only person from Kansas and that this this strong link with Kansas suggests that he may have been the author.

In a few years, Fred plans to publish a revised and updated edition of the New Yale's Book of Quotations.

He's still on the fence about what to do with the entry for the Pledge of Allegiance.

He always attributed it to Francis Bellamy, editor at the Youth's Companion, just like everybody else.

Now, Fred is considering changing the author to anonymous.

A long forgotten article in a long forgotten Kansas newspaper has called everything into question.

Fred can't read Francis Bellamy's overwrought descriptions of that hot August night in eighteen ninety two, the overflowing waste paper basket, Bellamy racking his brains for inspiration, the words finally coming to him one by one, each imbued with immense patriotic significance.

Fred can't read all of that without wondering was it an elaborate fiction?

Did Francis Bellamy make the whole story up?

And if so, who really wrote the Pledge of allegiance.

It's a complex story.

I can't say for sure who the author was, but I do feel that I can say that it was not Francis Bellamy, and that it appears to me that he essentially fabricated a detailed story of how he wrote it, which was not accurate.

Today, in schools across America, kids start each day by standing up, hand over heart and reciting the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, One Nations under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

The Pledge has gone through some changes since it debuted more than one hundred and thirty years ago.

The biggest was the addition of under God.

That was President Dwight D.

Eisenhower's idea.

He wanted to stick it to those godless ummies in the Soviet Union, so under God was added in nineteen fifty four.

But despite a few new words, the job of the Pledge is still very much the same as it was in eighteen ninety two, to instill a spirit of patriotism in the next generation.

Meanwhile, we're still arguing about what it means to be an American.

Until we find an answer, We'll keep saying the Pledge.

We'll probably never know who really wrote it, but we can take its message to heart.

Wouldn't it be nice if this nation was a little less divided and more indivisible, and that liberty and justice were truly for all.

One of those Bellamy boys was onto something, unless, of course they were both liars.

Okay, Saren, I feel like you already have casting in mind.

For this one.

Yes, our go to casting director, you.

Are one hundred percent that right.

I'm gonna put on my Hollywood hat for a second.

Okay, imagine the movie version of this.

You go to see it because on the poster and in the trailers you have as Frank Bellamy, the older one, the adult Paul Rudd, and as Kid Bellamy, it's the kid from Young Sheldon.

Yeah, get Young Sheldon here, that's perfect.

Right, He's got the vibe you want for this.

Yeah, a little poem writing child, perfect.

Totally sensitive, loves America, he's in the heartland.

Looks good in a bow tie.

Exactly, little geeky really cares.

I'd see that movie.

I would also see the off Broadway play version where one person plays both Frank and young Frank Bellamy and you just kind of go with it and and lean into the insanity that they both yes, yes, and if he's unavailable Paul Dano.

It's perfect.

How about very special character?

Does anyone jump out at you to to anoint this episodis I'm gonna throw out Fred Shapiro while you're thinking, yes, from the Book of Quotations, because keeping this alive one hundred thirty years later.

Good for him giving us a nice hook to bring it back to the present day as well.

And he's like the Snopes dot Com of quotes.

We need people like him to make sure we get these things right.

It's like, Okay, here's the real story people.

Did you know Dana?

Did you have one?

Because I have one?

But it's a little bit of a theory.

I want your theory please.

Okay, mine is the anonymous woman who I believe actually wrote this pledge.

And you're wondering, Zaren, I didn't hear any woman in this Where are you coming with this?

Right?

Wow, here's how it goes?

Ready.

I think both Bellamies were plagiarists because the adult Frank Bellamy clearly he played dress from kid Bellamy in Kansas, right, But the newspapers dot com guy, he finds it two years earlier than that.

Kid Bellamy apparently allegedly wrote his pledge of allegiance in a nearby town in Kansas.

Right.

Now, imagine a school marm is going between these two towns.

She's the one who wrote the pledge of allegiance.

She teaches these Kansas kids.

One day, Kid Bellamy sees the contest.

He pilfers her pledge.

She sends it in.

Editor Frank Bellamy's like, all this is amazing.

He pilfers it from the kid.

Both bellambies.

They steal the pledge of allegiance from some anonymous school marm in Kansas.

It's like Virginia Wolf's goold quote about the women, which is you know, for most of history anonymous was a woman.

Did you point out, Jason the Yale Book of Quotations they were going to consider listing dude is anonymous, And I think dude is a woman because it's anonymous.

I bet a woman wrote it.

That's my theory.

I love this theory.

And just a round of applause on behalf of all women from sarn Thank you.

I would have Elizabeth Loss play that woman in our film.

Yes amazing.

Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.

This episode was written by Dave Ruse.

Our producer is Josh Fisher.

Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington, Mixing and mastering by Beheid Fraser.

Secial Episodes is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Saren Burnett and me Jason English.

Original music by Elise McCoy, our story editor is Aaron Edwards.

Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson.

Show logo by Lucy Quintania.

I'd like to thank our excellent voice actors, especially two of my three daughters, Kate and Juliette English.

We couldn't meet Charlotte's asking price, but good work, Kate and Juliette.

Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.