Replies

The country existed, it was the Republic that was new.

With all due respect the country did not exist under any form when any of the founders was born. So they could not be natural born U.S. citizens.

If you were alive and living in this country at the time the Constitution was adopted by the thirteen colonies, you were a U.S. citizen. If both of your parents were alive and living in this country, you were a “natural born” citizen.

I don't see how you can reach the conclusion that that is what that particular clause means. The clause is meant to restrict the presidency to people who were born into U.S. citizenship and not who obtained it later in life. The grandfather clause was necessary because otherwise none of the signers of the Constitution, and the political leadership of the time, would have qualified.

This isn’t rocket science. I daresay it just may be easy enough for the U.S. Supreme Court to grasp this meaning, even if you cannot.

I grasp your meaning. I cannot follow what passes for your logic.

Perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes here.

Without the grandfather clause, you are correct, none of the framers of the U.S. Constitution could have been natural born U.S. citizens.

Politically speaking,the country (the colonies) existed before the Constitution was adopted as part of the British empire. They were the framers were subjects of the crown. One could say they were all "natural born" British subjects. With 47 of the 55 framers of the Constitution were born in the colonies themselves.

For example: Augustine Washington, father of George Washington, was born in 1694 in Westmoreland, Virginia. Mary Ball Washington, mother of good, old George, was born in Lancaster County, Virginia, in 1708.

The nation's first president was, in fact, Constitutionally speaking: a "natural born" U.S. citizen.

But you may be correct in suggesting my prior post was too general when I stated: "...If both of your parents were alive and living in this country, you were a “natural born” citizen".... I may now have to change that to "If both parents were born in the colonies,"... they would have been U.S. citizens at the time of adoption of the U.S. Constitution(alive or dead), would be a more accurate statement.

ex animo

davidfarrar