THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG

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

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

Oh say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

Oh say, does that Star—Spangled Banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:

‘Tis the Star—Spangled Banner! 0, long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation;

Blest with vic’try and peace, may the heav’n—rescued land

Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a Nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”

And the Star—Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Maryland lawyer, Francis Scott Key, composed these words in 1814, having witnessed the bombing of Fort McHenry by the British. When at dawn he saw the flag still flying, he knew the British had been driven back. This very flag is preserved in theSmithsonian Institute, Washington, DC.

In 1931, the “Star—Spangled Banner” was declared the national anthem by Congress.

——Abraham Lincoln
from “The Gettysburg Address,” 1863

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self—evident: that all men are created equal.”

——Martin Luther King
Washington, D.C., March, 1963

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

——John F. Kennedy
Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

. . . this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; the government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

——Abraham Lincoln
from “The Gettysburg Address,” 1863