July 6, 2006
 
COMMENTARY: July 20 Marks 50th Anniversary of Our National Motto
 
By Steve Casey
Special to Huntington News Network
 
Staring through the darkness, Francis Scott Key strained to see if the banner of our nation was still being flown above Fort McHenry. Being held as a temporary prisoner on one of the British ships involved in the attack, he longed to help save the nation that he loved so dearly. As the bombs burst in air, he was encouraged to see that the flag was still there. He prayed fervently that the mighty Hand of God would grant victory to the fighting men who were putting their lives on the line to gain freedom for themselves, their families, and for generations of Americans to come. Key’s heart sank when the cannons from Fort McHenry stopped firing almost an hour before the British guns ceased bombarding the shore with their arsenal.
 
Could the flag, the symbol of all for which the new nation stood, have fallen?
 
Then as the dawn’s early light appeared he saw it. Tattered and scarred, Old Glory, that beautiful star-spangled banner, still flew boldly over the land of the free.
 
In the inspiration of that moment, Francis Scott Key wrote the four verses of the poem, originally known as “The Defense of Fort McHenry,” which we now know as our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.” It was in the fourth verse of that anthem that the phrase which would later become our national motto was suggested:
 
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
 
In 1865, as the last bill signed by Abraham Lincoln before his death, the phrase “In God We Trust” was made a part of our currency. But, it was not until July 20, 1956, that it was officially declared to be the motto of the United States.
 
Today many want to strip us of our heritage and deny us the freedom of any public expression of faith in God. Even our courts have tried to remove the phrase “under God” from The Pledge of Allegiance. These words, taken from Lincoln’s phrase, “nation, under God,” in the Gettysburg Address, were added to the Pledge by an act of Congress and signed into law on June 14, 1954, by President Dwight Eisenhower. At the signing, Eisenhower stated, “In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.”
 
The generation that rejects trust in God will be the generation that will see freedom die.
 
The words of Thomas Jefferson inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson memorial serve as both a reminder and a warning, "God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”
 
President Ronald Reagan warned, “Without God [our nation] will not and cannot long endure....If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under.”
 
Steve Casey is the author of: “In God We Trust: The Faith of the Men on the Money.”
 
He lives in Stonewall, Louisiana and can be reached at scasey@epmi.org