Opinion of the Court
I
"The very purpose of a national flag is to serve as a symbol of our country," Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 405 (1989), and of its proud traditions "of freedom, of equal opportunity, of religious tolerance, and of good will for other peoples who share our aspirations," id., at 437 (Stevens, J., dissenting). As its history illustrates, the Pledge of Allegiance evolved as a common public acknowledgment of the ideals that our flag symbolizes. Its recitation is a patriotic exercise designed to foster national unity and pride in those principles.
The Pledge of Allegiance was initially conceived more than a century ago. As part of the nationwide interest in commemorating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America, a widely circulated national magazine for youth proposed in 1892 that pupils recite the following affirmation: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."[1] In the 1920's, the National Flag Conferences replaced the phrase "my Flag" with "the flag of the United States of America."
In 1942, in the midst of World War II, Congress adopted, and the President signed, a Joint Resolution codifying a detailed set of "rules and customs pertaining to the display and use of the flag of the United States of America." Ch. 435, 56 Stat. 377. Section 7 of this codification provided in full:
- ↑ J. Baer, The Pledge of Allegiance: A Centennial History, 1892–1992, p. 3 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). At the time, the phrase "one Nation indivisible" had special meaning because the question whether a State could secede from the Union had been intensely debated and was unresolved prior to the Civil War. See J. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln 12–24 (rev. ed. 1964). See also W. Rehnquist, Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876, p. 182 (2004).
