One Nation

"One Nation" comes from a pledge written for schoolchildren. Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister working for the Boston magazine The Youth's Companion, wrote it for the national Columbus Day school celebration of 1892, the 400th anniversary of the voyage. It was published that September and recited in classrooms across the country that fall.

Bellamy's version was short: allegiance to the flag and to the republic, "one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all." The wording has been changed since, but "one Nation" has been there from the first draft. In 1892 the Civil War had been over for less than thirty years, and the word next to it, indivisible, was not a figure of speech.

The picture handles the idea with the plainest graphic means there are.

A flag fills the top half of a white canvas in flat red, white and navy, with no folds, no shading and no wave. Its two lowest red stripes have come loose and float underneath as separate bars, the kind of move a poster designer makes. Below them sits a navy eagle in silhouette, wings raised, and then the two words in heavy navy capitals. Nothing else. It holds its own in a bright kitchen, an office or a kid's room.