Reading 3 of 6 free1776 Club · all 6 storiesTuesday, September 8
From the desk
Start with 1974: Gerald Ford signed a full pardon for Richard Nixon, closing off any criminal case before it could reach a courtroom, no charges ever filed, barely a month after the resignation that made the question urgent. Also worth your time: 1892, when a magazine circulation manager named Francis Bellamy finished writing the Pledge of Allegiance days before deadline and had it in classrooms within weeks. Korea's occupation begins the same day in 1945, with Hodge's troops landing at Incheon and no Korean speaker among them.
— The Patriot Compass desk
1974Featured · This day in history
Ford pardons Nixon, wiping away any Watergate charges before they're filed
Four weeks after Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, the question of whether he would ever stand trial hung over Washington. On September 8, 1974, Gerald Ford signed a proclamation granting Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any offenses he may have committed while in office. No charges had ever been filed against him. The move, coming about a month after the resignation, closed off any criminal case before it could reach a courtroom.
Ford's pardon set the modern precedent that a former president could be shielded from prosecution before any indictment existed, a question the country had never faced. Many historians point to it as a factor in Ford's narrow 1976 loss, and it left "was Nixon let off easy" as a fixture of American political memory.
Did you know
QWhat specific date started the whole Watergate affair before it ever reached Ford's desk?
The scandal traces to June 17, 1972, when operatives tied to Nixon's re-election campaign broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. That break-in, more than two years before the pardon, set off the chain of investigations and cover-up efforts that eventually forced Nixon's hand. By the time Ford signed the proclamation in September 1974, the country had been living with the fallout from that single night for over 26 months. The 26 months between the break-in and the pardon meant Watergate dominated two full years of American political life before Ford closed off any chance of prosecution.
QHow much of Nixon's presidency had already passed by the time the DNC break-in that started it all actually happened?
More than two years passed between the break-in and the pardon. Operatives tied to Nixon's re-election campaign broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, and Ford signed the pardon proclamation on September 8, 1974, meaning the scandal spanned nearly all of Nixon's second term and ended it early. Nixon had won re-election that November by a landslide, defeating George McGovern in 49 states, only two years before resigning under threat of impeachment. That two-year gap is part of why the pardon, when it came, felt sudden.
QDid Nixon face any legal consequence at all after the pardon covered his federal crimes?
Nixon avoided federal prosecution entirely, but the pardon carried no power over state-level or civil matters, and Nixon still lost his license to practice law in New York in 1976 for obstruction of justice related to Watergate. He also remained legally exposed to civil suits from Watergate-related litigation for years afterward. The federal pardon closed off criminal charges tied to his presidency, but it did not erase every institutional consequence he faced as a private citizen. Nixon spent much of the following two decades working to rehabilitate his public image through writing and foreign policy commentary rather than facing a courtroom.
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1945military
American troops come ashore at Incheon; Korea splits at the 38th parallel
A month after Soviet troops swept into northern Korea, the United States had yet to put a single soldier on the peninsula. On September 8, 1945, Lieutenant General John R. Hodge and the XXIV Corps landed at Incheon to occupy Korea south of the 38th parallel, a day after General Douglas MacArthur's Proclamation No. 1 declared U.S. military control and English the official language there. The United States Army Military Government in Korea began that day, with no Korean speaker in Hodge's command and no plan beyond holding the line against Moscow.
Two American officers, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel, drew the 38th parallel on a map in Washington on August 10, 1945, mainly to keep Seoul under U.S. control before the Soviets got there. That improvised line, meant as a temporary occupation boundary, hardened into a permanent border. It drew the United States into a war five years later, and 28,000 American troops are still stationed in South Korea today.
Did you know
QHow did American soldiers behave toward Korean civilians during the occupation?
US troops committed rape and looting during the occupation of southern Korea, though on a smaller scale than Soviet forces did in the north. Widespread racism among American personnel toward Koreans compounded the abuse, coloring how ordinary Koreans experienced their supposed liberators. Hodge's command had no clear guidelines from Washington on how to administer the territory, leaving individual units largely to their own conduct on the ground. The behavior undercut the American claim to be a liberating force rather than another occupying power. This shaped local politics from the earliest weeks of the occupation onward.
QWho did Hodge actually answer to once his boots hit Korean soil?
Hodge reported directly to General MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo, not to the State Department or anyone in Washington, D.C. That chain of command meant Korea policy ran through a military headquarters focused on occupied Japan rather than through diplomats with regional expertise. Hodge had no clear guidelines from the US government on how to actually administer the country he now controlled, so decisions on the ground were made largely ad hoc by a general with Pacific combat experience but no political guidance. Korea policy was folded into MacArthur's Tokyo command rather than run separately.
QWhen did Soviet troops first cross into Korea, and how far ahead of the Americans were they?
Soviet forces entered northern Korea in early August 1945, roughly a full month before Hodge's XXIV Corps ever reached Incheon on September 8. That head start let Moscow's troops establish facts on the ground in the north while Washington was still deciding how to respond, prompting American planners to scramble for a southern occupation zone specifically to keep the Soviets from claiming the entire peninsula. The month-long gap between Soviet entry and American arrival meant the two occupying powers started from very different positions of control, one already established, the other still assembling its staff.
1892culture
A new pledge, timed to fifteen seconds, goes into classrooms nationwide
On September 8, 1892, The Youth's Companion published a short oath and instructed schools to have students recite it during that October's Columbus Day observance. Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister working as the magazine's circulation manager, had written it: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." He designed it to take fifteen seconds to say. Schools across the country had children reciting it within weeks; Bellamy had finished the wording only days before The Youth's Companion's deadline.
Bellamy wrote the pledge to answer what he called a low ebb in patriotic feeling, about three decades removed from the Civil War and amid rising immigration he hoped a shared oath might Americanize. Congress made it official law in 1942, and in 1954 added "under God," and a magazine's Columbus Day gimmick became the daily civic ritual of American public schooling.
Did you know
QWhat was the original salute that went with the pledge, and why did it disappear?
The gesture that accompanied Bellamy's words began with the arm outstretched toward the flag, palm down, then rotated the palm upward. Schools performed it in unison for decades, but by the 1940s the motion looked uncomfortably close to salutes used by fascist regimes overseas. Americans dropped the extended-arm gesture and replaced it with the hand-over-heart posture still used today. The words survived the change entirely intact; only the accompanying body movement was retired, a rare case of a ritual's physical half being erased while its verbal half kept going largely unchanged.
QWhat phrase in the pledge did Bellamy specifically regret losing, and why was it changed?
Bellamy originally wrote "I pledge allegiance to my Flag," but the phrase was later altered to "the flag of the United States of America" because schools had grown full of foreign-born children and officials wanted no ambiguity about which flag was meant. Bellamy objected, saying the revision "did injure the rhythmic balance of the original composition." He had built the oath to be spoken in one breath, and the added words broke that compact rhythm. The change stuck anyway, driven by the same immigration anxieties that had partly inspired the pledge's creation in the first place.
QWhat made James Upham tell his wife he wouldn't have 'lived in vain'?
Upham, the Youth's Companion marketer who pushed the Columbus Day school campaign, confided to his wife Mary that his goal was to instill in American youth "a love for their country and the principles on which it was founded," so they would carry forward the ideals the founders wrote into the Constitution. He told his wife the campaign would mean he had not "lived in vain." Upham spent months lobbying governors and members of Congress to secure the observance before Bellamy ever wrote a word of the pledge itself, treating the project as a personal mission rather than a business gimmick.
