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Jefferson’s views on a person having a right to expatriate reveal that he looked to natural law and the law of nations and Vattel rather than the English common law on questions of citizenship. In a letter dated June 12, 1817, to Dr. John Manners, Jefferson made his views on whether the English common law applied to such questions well known:

“To Doctor John Manners.

Monticello, June 12, 1817.

SIR

Your favor of May 20th has been received some time since, but the increasing inertness of age renders me slow in obeying the calls of the writing table, and less equal than I have been to its labors.

My opinion on the right of Expatriation has been, so long ago as the year 1776, consigned to record in the act of the Virginia code, drawn by myself, recognizing the right expressly, and prescribing the mode of exercising it. The evidence of this natural right, like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of kings. If he has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, he has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode; and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which Nature has traced, for each individual, the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness. It certainly does not exist in his mind. Where, then, is it? I believe, too, I might safely affirm, that there is not another nation, civilized or savage, which has ever denied this natural right. I doubt if there is another which refuses its exercise. I know it is allowed in some of the most respectable countries of continental Europe, nor have I ever heard of one in which it was not. How it is among our savage neighbors, who have no law but that of Nature, we all know. . . . “ http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/jefferson/1817.html. We can see how Jefferson was clear in stating the right to expatriate, like the right to life, liberty, and to pursue happiness, was a natural right that came from God and not from the English common law. He also explained that the English common law was adopted by the states and was applied by them on local issues. But when it came to the national government, he stated that no such law was adopted. Hence, the right to expatriate could have come only from natural law rather than the English common law. As he applied natural law to the question of expatriation, he would have also applied it to defining a “natural born Citizen.” These historical writing show that Jefferson surely would not have considered a “natural born Citizen” to have the same meaning as an English common law “natural born subject.”