Oath of Office
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and
defend the Constitution of the United States against all
enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true
faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this
obligation freely, without any mental reservation or
purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully
discharge the duties of the office on which I am about
to enter: So help me God.
History of the Oath
At the start of each new Congress, in January of every
odd-numbered year, the entire House of Representatives and
one-third of the Senate performs a solemn and festive
constitutional rite that is as old as the Republic. 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 Constitution contains an oath of office only for the
president. For other officials, including members of
Congress, that document specifies only that they "shall
be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this
constitution." In 1789, the First Congress reworked this
requirement into a simple fourteen-word oath: "I do
solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the
Constitution of the United States."
For nearly three-quarters of a century, that oath served
nicely, although to the modern ear it sounds woefully
incomplete. Missing are the soaring references to bearing
"true faith and allegiance;" to taking "this
obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose
of evasion;" and to "well and faithfully"
discharging the duties of the office.
The outbreak of the Civil War quickly transformed the routine
act of oath-taking into one of enormous significance. In
April of 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 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 more
polished and graceful 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 elegantly bound 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 today's moving affirmation of
constitutional allegiance.
Taking the Oath
At the beginning of a new term of office, senators-elect take
their oath of office from the presiding officer in an open
session of the Senate before they can begin to perform their
legislative activities. From the earliest days, the
senator-elect—both the freshman and the returning veteran—has
been escorted down the aisle by another senator to take the
oath from the presiding officer. Customarily, the other
senator from the senator-elect's state performs that ritual.
Occasionally, the senator-elect chooses a senator from
another state, either because the same-state colleague is
absent or because the newly elected senator has sharp
political differences with that colleague. Such public
displays of these differences do not go unnoticed by
journalists.
A ban on photography in the Senate chamber has led senators
to devise an alternative way of capturing this highly
symbolic moment in their Senate careers. In earlier times,
the Vice President invited newly sworn senators and their
families into his Capitol office for a reenactment for
home-state photographers. Beginning in the late 1970s,
following the restoration of the Old Senate Chamber to its
appearance at the time it went out of service in 1859,
reenactment ceremonies have been held in that deeply
historical setting, resplendent in crimson and gold.