When the legislature was assembled, every person claiming to be a member should take a test oath prescribed in the act, to the effect that he had never been a member of Congress or of a state legislature, nor held any civil office created by law for the administration of any general law of a state, or for the administration of justice in any state, or under the laws of the United States, nor served in the military or naval forces of the United States as an officer, and thereafter engaged in or supported hostilities against the United States; each person should take this oath or else an oath (also prescribed _verbatim_) that he had been relieved from disability by Congress according to section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The exclusion on the ground of color of any person elected and otherwise qualified, the act declared "would be illegal and revolutionary," and was "prohibited." The act directed the President to use force in executing the act upon application from the governor. The process ordered by the act seems simple and obvious, but the general of the army deduced much from it not apparent on its face. This act, he reasoned, implies that the Georgia government is provisional, and has never ceased to be so since March 2, 1867. And in that case the act of March 2, 1867, has never ceased to operate as to Georgia, since by its own terms it is to remain in force in each "rebel state" until each respectively has been "by law admitted to representation in the congress of the United States." Georgia has not been so admitted, since she did not comply with the Omnibus Act. Therefore the Reconstruction Acts are still in force in Georgia, and the general orders of July 28, 1868, declaring the Third Military District abolished were a mistake. Accordingly those orders were countermanded by the general of the army on January 4, 1870, and General Terry, a prominent advocate, as we have seen, of the revival of military government in Georgia, was placed in command of the remnant of the Third Military District.[210]