In the United States, the oath
of office for the President is
specified in the Constitution (Article II, Section 1).
With the right hand up and the left on the open Holy Bible:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully
execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of
my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
An oath
of office is an oath or affirmation a person takes before undertaking the
duties of an office, usually a position in government or within a religious
body, although such oaths are sometimes required of officers of other organizations.
Such oaths are often required by the laws of the state, religious body, or
other organization before the person may actually exercise the powers of the
office or any religious body. It may be administered at an inauguration, coronation,
enthronement, or other ceremony connected with the taking up of office itself,
or it may be administered privately. In some cases it may be administered
privately and then repeated during a public ceremony.
Some oaths
of office are a statement of loyalty to a constitution or other legal text or
to a person or other office-holder (an oath to support the constitution of the
state, or of loyalty to the king). Under the laws of a state it may be
considered treason or a high crime to betray a sworn oath of office.
The word
'oath' and the phrase 'I swear' refer to a solemn vow. For those who choose not
to, the alternative terms 'solemn promise' and 'I promise' are sometimes used.
History of the Oath
While the
oath-taking dates back to the First Congress in 1789, the current oath is a
product of the 1860s, drafted by Civil War-era
members of Congress intent on ensnaring traitors.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 established an additional
oath taken by federal judges:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm), that I will administer
justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the
rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the
duties incumbent on me, according to the best of my abilities and understanding,
agreeably to the Constitution, and laws of the United States. [So help me God.]
The
outbreak of the Civil War quickly
transformed the routine act of oath-taking into one of enormous significance.
In April 1861, a time of uncertain
and shifting loyalties, President Abraham Lincoln ordered
all federal civilian employees within the executive branch to take an expanded
oath. When Congress convened for a brief emergency session in July, members
echoed the president’s action by enacting legislation requiring employees to
take the expanded oath in support of the Union. This oath is the earliest
direct predecessor of the modern version of the oath.
When
Congress returned for its regular session in December 1861, members who
believed that the Union had as much to fear from northern traitors as southern
soldiers again revised the oath, adding a new first section known as the “Ironclad
Test Oath.” The war-inspired Test Oath, signed into law on July 2, 1862,
required “every person elected or appointed to any office ... under the
Government of the United States ... excepting the President of the United
States” to swear or affirm that they had never previously engaged in criminal
or disloyal conduct.
Those
government employees who failed to take the 1862 Test Oath would not receive a
salary; those who swore falsely would be prosecuted for perjury and forever denied federal employment.
The 1862
oath’s second section incorporated a different rendering of the hastily drafted
1861 oath. Although Congress did not extend coverage of the Ironclad Test Oath
to its own members, many took it voluntarily. Angered by those who refused this
symbolic act during a wartime crisis, and determined to prevent the eventual
return of prewar southern leaders to positions of power in the national
government, congressional hard-liners eventually succeeded by 1864 in making the Test
Oath mandatory for all members.
The Senate
then revised its rules to require that members not only take the Test Oath
orally, but also that they “subscribe” to it by signing a printed copy. This
condition reflected a wartime practice in which military and civilian authorities
required anyone wishing to do business with the federal government to sign a
copy of the Test Oath.
The current
practice of newly sworn senators signing individual pages in an oath book dates
from this period.
As tensions
cooled during the decade following the Civil War, Congress enacted private legislation
permitting particular former Confederates to take only the second section of
the 1862 oath. An 1868 public law prescribed this alternative oath for “any
person who has participated in the late rebellion, and from whom all legal disabilities
arising therefrom have been removed by act of Congress.” Northerners immediately pointed to the
new law’s unfair double standard that required loyal Unionists to take the Test
Oath’s harsh first section while permitting ex-Confederates to ignore it. In 1884, a new generation of
lawmakers quietly repealed the first section of the Test Oath, leaving intact
the current affirmation of constitutional allegiance.
