738 



TEST OATHS. 



desirable. Twenty-three business firms of that 

 city recently expressed their willingness to leave 

 the Territory, provided the Mormons would pay 

 them seventy-five per cent, of the cost value 

 of their property, but their offer was not accept- 

 ed. Time of passage between Omaha and Salt 

 Lake Cky now is only eight days. Three of 

 them are occupied in the trip from Ornaha to 

 Denver, and the remaining five from Denver to 

 Salt Lake City. In these eight days' travel 

 there are 300 miles of railroad and 900 of 

 stage conveyance total, 1,200 miles. 



WASHINGTON. The field of surveying opera- 

 tions in this the most distant political com- 

 munity of the Union, during the last year, em- 

 braces nearly 200,000 acres. This quantity, 

 added to the work heretofore executed, reaches 

 an area of upward of 3,530,000 acres surveyed 

 in Washington since the initiation in that Ter- 

 ritory of the public surveys. The Surveyor- 

 General recommends that, during the year end- 

 ing 30th June, 1868, the lines shall be extended 

 east and west of the Cascades, and between 

 those mountains and Puget Sound, the country 

 being traversed by numerous streams, and the 

 valleys well adapted to agriculture ; and that the 

 surveys shall be prosecuted in the region of the 

 Columbia River, along the White Bluffs, the 

 head of navigation, likewise in the vicinity of 

 Fort Colville, and in the Willopah Valley, im- 

 mediately east of Shoal-water Bay. 



Notwithstanding its remoteness, this Territory 

 is rapidly assuming importance. The wheat 

 crop of the upper country is estimated as fol- 

 lows: Walla-Walla Valley, 200,000 bushels; 

 Grand Ronde Valley, 100,000; Powder Eiver, 

 Payette, and Boise Valleys, 100,000. The crops 

 of Umatilla, Colville, the Nez Perces country, 

 Bitter Root and adjoining valleys, will probably 

 reach 100,000' making a total of 500,000 

 bushels. 



George E. Coles is Governor of the Territory. 

 The Legislature is opposed to the removal of 

 the military headquarters of the North to Port- 

 land, Oregon, and have remonstrated against it. 



TEST OATHS. The participation of persons 

 in secession led to the enactment of laws re- 

 quiring all who were to hold office, or desired 

 to exercise certain rights, to take an oath in ref- 

 erence to the part taken by them during the 

 war. Congress, on the 2d of July, 1862, pre- 

 scribed an oath to be taken by all persons before 

 entering upon the execution of the duties or 

 privileges of any government office. (See AN- 

 NUAL CYCLOPAEDIA, 1862, pp. 376.) 



By act of January 24, 1865, it was provided 

 that thereafter no person should be admitted to 

 practice in the Supreme Court, and after the 

 4th of March, 1865, in any District or Circuit 

 Court of the United States, or Court of Claims, 

 even if he were previously an attorney of such 

 Court, unless he should take the oath set forth 

 in the act of July 2, 1862. 



The convention to form a constitution for the 

 State of Missouri, inserted in that instrument a 

 provision (See ANNUAL CYCLOPAEDIA, 1865, pp. 



prescribing an oath which requires the 

 affiant to deny not only that he has ever teen 

 in armed hostility to the United States or the 

 lawful authorities thereof, but, among other 

 things, that he has ever, " by act or word,'- 

 manifested his adherence to the cause of the 

 enemies of the United States, foreign or domes- 

 tic, or his desire for their triumph over the 

 arms of the United States, or his sympathy 

 with those engaged in rebellion, or that he has 

 ever harbored or aided any person engaged in 

 guerilla warfare against the loyal inhabitants of 

 the United States, or has ever entered or left 

 the State for the purpose of avoiding enrolment 

 or draft in the military service of the United 

 States, or to escape the performance of duty in 

 the militia of the United States, or has ever in- 

 dicated in any terms his disaffection to the Gov- 

 ernment of the United States in its contest with 

 rebellion. 



Every person who is unable to take this oath 

 is declared incapable of holding in the State 

 " any office of honor, trust, or profit, under its au- 

 thority, or of being an officer, councillor, direc- 

 tor, or trustee, or other manager, of any incor- 

 poration, public or private, now existing or here- 

 after established by its authority, or of acting 

 as professor or teacher in any educational insti- 

 tution, or in any common or other school, or of 

 holding any real estate or other property in 

 trust for the use of any church, religious so- 

 ciety or congregation." And any person hold- 

 ing any of the offices, trusts, or positions men- 

 tioned at the time the constitution takes effect, 

 is required within thirty days thereafter to take 

 the oath, and if he fail to comply \vith this re- 

 quirement, it is declared that his office, trust, 

 or position, shall ipso facto become vacant. And 

 no person after the expiration of the sixty days 

 is permitted, without taking the oath, " to prac- 

 tise as an attorney or counsellor-at-law, nor, 

 after that period, can any person be competent 

 as a bishop, priest, deacon, minister, elder, or 

 other clergyman of any religious persuasion, 

 sect, or religion, to teach or preach or solemnize 

 marriage." Fine and imprisonment are pre- 

 scribed as a punishment for holding or exercis- 

 ing any of the offices, positions, trusts, profes- 

 sions, or functions specified, without having 

 taken the oath, and false swearing or affirmation 

 to the oath is declared to be perjury, and pun- 

 ishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary. 



The almost unexceptional participation by the 

 citizens of the Southern States in the war, ren- 

 dered it nearly impossible to select proper per- 

 sons to carry on the affairs of the Government^ 

 who could conscientiously take the oath pre- 

 scribed by Congress. The matter was presented 

 to Congress by the President, who in April 

 transmitted a communication from the Secre- 

 tary of the Treasury and the Postmaster-Gen- 

 eral, addressed to him by those officers, sug- 

 gesting a modification of the oath of office pre- 

 scribed by the act of Congress, approved July 

 2, 1862. 



The letter of the Secretary of the Treasury 



