The officiant in such ceremonies often points out to the honoree and to those in attendance that the U.S. military oath of office stands apart from others around the world in that we swear an oath, not to a monarch, nor to a head of state, but to the Constitution.
I first swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution in 2006 at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. It was the “rude bridge that arched the flood,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, where “embattled farmers stood // and fired the shot heard round the world.” There was no Constitution then; only a tacit agreement between the thirteen colonies to throw off the bonds of tyranny. Thomas Jefferson would formalize the language of that agreement the following year. It was the thirteen sovereign states’ duty, he wrote, “to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” The throwing off—the Revolutionary War—took place from 1775 to 1783, but the new guards would not be in place until the first nine of the thirteen states ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1787 and 1788. It is that document I swore to support and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic at the Old North Bridge in 2006 and now, fifteen years in, I bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
In those fifteen years, I have attended countless enlistment, commissioning, and promotion ceremonies. The officiant in such ceremonies often points out to the honoree and to those in attendance that the U.S. military oath of office stands apart from others around the world in that we swear an oath, not to a monarch, nor to a head of state, but to the Constitution. This much is true. But I have heard several officiating officers follow this statement up with a second: that in the United States military, our oath is to the idea of America. This is false.
On the 6th of January 2021, the Constitution was threatened by “enemies domestic.” Insurrectionists breached the Capitol intending to disrupt Congress’s efforts to “open all the Certificates,” as Article II, Section I of the Constitution requires, so that “the Votes [could] then be counted.” According to CBS News, at least ten percent of the more than 700 people charged in connection with the insurrection have served in the U.S. military. Each of those 81 current or former military service members has—at least once, perhaps several times—raised their right hand and sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.
Most of those who stormed the Capitol and threatened members of Congress did so because they believed it was the right thing to do. I have no doubt that those who participated believed the election was stolen. I have no doubt that they believed—however mistakenly—that they were acting in the best interest of the country. I have no doubt that they committed their violent and illegal acts to defend and secure their own idea of America. But even if all this is true, their actions were at odds with the oath they had previously sworn. When people leave military service, surely they are absolved of their oath. I am not making the strong claim that January sixth insurrectionists violated their oaths of office. I am making the weaker claim that one can believe oneself to be fighting for one’s country while at the same time contradicting the words of the oath.
The oath I swore, and the oath sworn by at least 81 of those charged in the insurrection, was not always to do what I believe to be in the best interest of the country. I did not swear to support and defend the idea of America, or American values, or democratic ideals—because since this country’s founding, serious Americans have disagreed about just what the idea of America ought to be, and which values are American, and which ideals are democratic.
In reality, you and I probably do not always agree about what the idea of America is or ought to be. Biden supporters and Trump supporters do not agree on an idea of America. Jefferson and Hamilton did not agree on the idea of America. Slavers and abolitionists and those held in bondage did not agree on the idea of America—and the country went to war over it. And the iron-sharpening work of disagreeing over and debating ideas about what America is and ought to be has made us better, not worse. Realizing the idea of America has been the work of the country since its founding. But even this debating and sharpening is not that to which I swore an oath. I did not swear an oath to make us better. My oath was to support and defend the Constitution.
Though the words of the oath have changed over time, the requirement that military members swear an oath is established in the very Constitution modern servicemembers swear to support and defend. Article VI, clause 3 says that “the Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” The very first bill signed into law in the United States in 1789 established language for that oath. “I … do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States.”
Changes in the oath over time reveal how Americans have thought about duty and obligation to one’s country. Between 1790 and 1862, military members (both officer and enlisted) swore, not to support and defend the Constitution, but to “bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies.” But this oath would prove insufficient against the pressures of civil strife. As soldiers abandoned their positions in the United States military and took up positions in the armies of the Confederacy, surely they violated the spirit of their oaths, but did they violate the letter?
The purpose of the ironclad test was to “ensure that government officials were not supporting, or had not supported, the Confederacy.”
In 1862, in the midst of war, Congress decided the 1790 oath lacked specificity about the threat from enemies domestic, and so they established a new and much lengthier oath for officers. Often called the “Ironclad Test Oath,” federal officials were required to swear that they had “never voluntarily borne arms against the United States” and had “voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto.” The purpose of the ironclad test was to “ensure that government officials were not supporting, or had not supported, the Confederacy.” This oath also returned to the 1789 oath’s reference to the Constitution but added something new: “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Shortly thereafter, in 1868, the officer oath was shortened, removing the ironclad test, and resulting in the oath officers swear today—the same oath I swore at The Old North Bridge in 2006. The enlisted oath underwent additional changes in 1950 and 1962 until, ultimately, it too culminated in a promise, among other things, “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
It is true that we swear an oath to support and defend a document rather than a person. And, in one sense, this is a startling discovery. In Federalist 74, Alexander Hamilton insisted that to ensure the alacrity that military force demands, the military must submit to a single commander in chief. “Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand.” And yet, so confident was the first Congress that our loyalty must be to the government as outlined in the Constitution and not to any single part of it, that the military oath was then, and is now, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
If we, officials in the federal government, were to abandon the oath we swore to the Constitution because the situation is just too dire, or because our current circumstances are unprecedented; or in the name of ideas, values, and ideals, we would be like the person who swears to love and honor and serve their spouse in sickness and in health, only later to say, “but how could I have known how sick they would get?”
The oath I swore was not to an idea but to words in the English language; engrossed on parchment; augmented with a Bill of Rights; and amended several times since. The actions of the 81 military veterans who participated in the insurrection were at odds with the oath they had previously sworn because they sought—by whatever means—to violate Article II, Section I of the Constitution.
This is not, of course, to say that our oath is to the Constitution as it was written in 1787. Nor is it to say that the Constitution can’t be amended even now. In Washington’s farewell address, he reminds us that “the basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.”
I offer no elixir that will cure us of the many maladies our political community suffers. Instead, I offer but this one method for treating our symptoms: Many who have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution, myself included, should spend more time studying the Constitution.
I have been asked to officiate three weddings. Each time, I asked the couple to sit down with me in advance to discuss what their wedding vows mean and why they are important. I have, in the past, been asked to administer the oath of office as well. I regret not insisting upon the same reflection and intentionality in preparing for the oath of office as I have in preparing for the wedding vows. Lt Col Kenneth Keskel, on whose work I have relied heavily throughout this essay, has written that “prior to taking their oath upon commission or reaffirming it upon promotion, too few officers take the time to read and study the document they swear to support and defend.” On this accusation I am guilty. If I am ever again given the honor of administering an enlistment, commissioning, or promotion oath of office, I will ask the honoree to re-read the Constitution, and I will re-read it, too. Just as we do not swear an oath to a monarch, we likewise do not swear an oath to a nebulous political idea. We swear instead to support and defend a real, and solid, and concrete thing.
Joseph Chapa is an officer in the U.S. Air Force and holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford. His book, Is Remote Warfare Moral? with PublicAffairs Books will be out in July 2022.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, or the Department of Defense.
Photo Credit: Constitution Image by Lynn Melchiori from Pixabay