Whenever there are massive, revolutionary changes in a society, the new
top dogs are likely to require loyalty oaths. Henry VIII, after declaring
himself supreme head of the church in England, required his subjects to
swear an oath acknowledging his supremacy. Saint Thomas More declined to take it, spoke no treason, but was beheaded anyway.  By 1634 Puritan migrants to New England were requiring oaths promising to denounce to the government anyone trying to change political structures.

Great Americans have also resisted oaths of any kind, most notably  Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island. He had been expelled from Massachusetts Bay colony both for disputing the Crown's right to take land from the Indians without paying for it and also for denouncing the colonial
government's efforts to sanctify secular deeds by  means of a religious
oath.

America's Founding Fathers were great believers in loyalty oaths. During
the revolt against Britain George Washington wrote in December 1775: "It is high time a test act was prepared and every man called upon to declare
himself that we may distinguish friends from foes."  He successfully urged
all 13 states and the Continental Congress to require oaths or affirmations
of allegiance from all inhabitants without exception.

The relatively sketchy national Constitution of 1787 requires oaths in two
places: Article II and Article VI. The first oath (or affirmation) is that of the President of the United States. More important is the second oath to be taken by Senators, Representatives, the Members of the several State
Legislatures and all executive and judicial officers of both the national
and the state governments "to support this constitution."

The very first Congress to meet under the 1787 Constitution added a new and longer oath making the constitutionally required one even more explicit. All office holders would promise to discharge their offices "agreeably to the constitution, and laws of the United States."

Later, Chief Justice John Marshall created in Marbury v. Madison  the power of judicial review by arguing that judges were bound by oath  to support the Constitution. That oath empowers and requires judges to inspect statute laws and strike them down when they go against the Constitution.

The post Civil War 14th Amendment excluded from office not any and all
Confederates but only those who had previously taken the oath/affirmation
of Article VI to support the  Constitution and then broken that oath by
rebelling or giving aid and comfort to rebels.

University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson, in his 1988
Constitutional Faith  uses American  loyalty oaths then and now (we all
must make one in order to receive a passport) to bolster his argument that
America not only has "the soul of a church" but also is a "faith community"
which must reconstitute itself every day through loyalty oaths, pledges of
allegiance and singing of the national anthem before sporting events. For
being an American is at least as demanding as vowing to be a good husband or wife. We do not inherit our Americanness. We earn it, deepen it day in and day out. Otherwise  what makes us American withers and dies.

-OOO-
 

for INDEPENDENT TORCH