How exactly would the court be able to rule V. Minor would be eligible for president if they didn't define natural-born citizen. This is a self-contradiction, unless you were quoting someone else.
It is not any sort of contradiction, self or otherwise because even under the very narrowest of definitions or interpretations of what constitutes a natural born citizen, Virginia Minor having two citizen parents and having been born on U.S. soil as the SCOTUS found, was without question a U.S. citizen. My point was that even under the very narrowest of definitions or interpretations of what constitutes a “natural born citizen”, the one that the Court said was “never in doubt”, the one you evidently hold to, Virginia Minor was one and being that she was over the age of 35 and that she didn’t participate in any acts of “rebellion” as defined in the 14th Amendment, yes she would have most likely have been deemed eligible to run for the office of POTUS during that time, even as she was ruled ineligible by the State of Missouri to vote and that ruling was upheld by the SCOTUS.
Victoria Woodhull ran for President in 1872 but failed to get on any state ballots. In 1884 Belva Ann Lockwood ran for POTUS and got on the ballot in 6 states and was estimated to have received 4,149 votes, “estimated” as Lockwood claimed voter fraud, that she received more votes than that but that many ballots cast for her had been torn up or not counted. But neither Woodhull nor Lockwood, while citizens, was at the time of their candidacy, allowed to vote.
But one again as I and others have pointed out, this case was not a case regarding who was or was not a natural born citizen or what constituted natural born vs. naturalized citizen or who was eligible for the office of POTUS; it was a case regarding voting rights. Even if Virginia Minor had been a naturalized citizen, or only her father was a U.S. citizen¸ as it would have been ascertained that Virginia Minor was a citizen, even if there was question or “some doubts” as to whether she was a natural born citizen, the question before the court would have been exactly the same: did the Constitution and the 14th Amendment grant suffrage to women who were citizens. Their answer was “no”. The 19th Amendment overturned that and all preceding rulings to say “yes”.
”It is contended that the provisions of the constitution and laws of the State of Missouri which confine the right of suffrage and registration therefor to men, are in violation of the Constitution of the United States, and therefore void. The argument is, that as a woman, born OR naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen of the United States and of the State in which she resides, she has the right of suffrage as one of the privileges and immunities of her citizenship, which the State cannot by its laws or constitution abridge.
This is why the SCOTUS in Minor v. Happersett said, and once again for those of you in Rio Linda; “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.”
The Court in Minor v. Happersett wasn’t ruling as to what constituted a Natural Born Citizen because they didn’t have to as Minor belonged to that class of citizenship that was never in doubt. That wasn’t the question before the Court. The question was whether Virginia Minor as citizen, be she a born OR a naturalized a citizen, was being denied what she claimed was her right to vote under the Constitution and under the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment.
For the sake of argument, if the question before the court was whether only a natural born citizen could vote, then the court would have had to address the question and it would have been “necessary to solve these doubts”.
If you are going to make the claim that there was a Holding in Minor v. Happersett regarding the definition of NBC rather than what it was, a Dicta, then you also have to consider it a Holding that States can allow non-citizens to vote:
” Besides this, citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, may under certain circumstances vote. The same provision is to be found in the constitutions of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas.”