Back in 1976, when the “Freedom Train” was wending its way around the country, my wife went aboard to see the exhibits. She was given the opportunity to buy an envelope containing photocopies of 1) The Unanimous Declaration, 2) the Constitution, 3) the Bill of Rights and 4) the original handwriten version of the Gettysburg Address. Each of them is/was handwritten. The first three are meticulously written out in careful script while the last was scrawled out in Lincoln’s typical poor handwriting.
I will not swear that my photocopy of the Constitution has not been tampered with because I cannot know that, but there is a comma right where we are talking about. Was it there when the document was adopted? I don’t know. I do know that (lacking photcopy machines) subsequent copies of the original were themselves carefully written out in longhand by people who were good at such things. I don’t know how many copies were made nor do I know that all copies either did or did not have that damned comma.
Granted, a comma there can have an effect on the meaning of the sentence. For us to know one way or another we’d have to look - not at a copy of a copy of a c.... (you get the idea) but at the original. Someone who lives near the National Archives might be able to decide this but lacking that I think we’re just going to have to disagree for now.
I’m not disagreeing. I was referring to a printed Constitution published in 1935 in which the comma does not appear. Why would it be in the original but not in published versions since then? I don’t know what the history of publishing the Constitution is, and why the printer would publish it without the comma. It would interesting to see if, when, and why it was published with or without a comma. The sentence doesn’t make sense with the comma inserted, and perhaps if it occurs in the original, it was omitted at some point for grammatical clarity.
I found another copy I have which is an official publication of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution and it DOES have the comma between “States, at.” So what does this mean?
The phrase “at the time of the adoption of this Constitution” has to refer to something, either to “natural born Citizen” or “Citizen of the United States” or both. It makes the most sense, both historically and grammatically, that it would refer to “Citizen of the United States” since it follows that phrase directly and seems to be the intent of the founders.
At least we are all pulling out our Constitutions and looking at them! Which is a good thing. Thanks for pointing that out in the interest of accuracy, which is what I was interested in.