Had the Chair at the beginning proceeded to administer the additional oath, as the earlier oath, there would have been no occasion for a rule. Or had the Chair afterwards, when attention was called to the omission, administered the additional oath according to the requirement of the statute, there would have been no occasion for a rule.
The Chair did no such thing, but left the taking of the oath to the conscience or will of each Senator. And though the statute solemnly declares that “every person elected or appointed to any office of honor or profit under the Government of the United States … shall, before entering upon the duties of such office, and before being entitled to any of the salary or other emoluments thereof, take and subscribe” the oath in question, yet the Senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] has not only “entered upon the duties” of his office as Senator, but he has continued to discharge these duties, and to draw his salary, although he has never taken and subscribed the oath.
Evidently something must be done to correct this incongruity, and to rehabilitate, if I may so say, the Act of Congress. I know no better way than by the proposed rule. But I have no partiality for this mode. I am ready for any other proposition which will lift the statute from the desuetude and neglect into which it was allowed to fall, and will secure its enforcement. In the events at hand this statute will be a safeguard of the Republic, and its enforcement here will secure its enforcement everywhere. To the traitor seeking office it will be a touchstone, while, with guardian force, it thrusts away from these Chambers all those brutal enemies, who, for the sake of Slavery, have helped to fill our land with mourning.
On the Yeas and Nays, the vote stood, Yeas 28, Nays 11. So the resolution was adopted.
January 26th Mr. Bayard took the prescribed oath, and on the 29th resigned his seat in the Senate.
January 25th, Mr. Sumner asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to bring in a bill supplementary to an Act entitled “An Act to prescribe an oath of office and for other purposes,” approved July 2, 1862, which was read the first and second times by unanimous consent, and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. It provided that no person should be admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, or of any Circuit or District Court of the United States, or of the Court of Claims, as an attorney or counsellor of such court, or should be allowed to appear and be heard in any such court, by virtue of any previous admission or any special power of attorney, unless he should have first taken the oath prescribed by the Act of July 2, 1862.
June 28th, Mr. Trumbull, from the Judiciary Committee, reported adversely on this bill.
December 22d, on motion of Mr. Sumner, the Senate proceeded to consider this bill, and it was passed,—Yeas 27, Nays 4. January 23, 1865, it passed the House of Representatives, and January 24th was approved by the President.