I fully recognize that; I would also remind you that - in absence of a definition or concrete guidance by a majority of the founders of the United States - we only have the legal system to rely upon.
For example, the ONLY statute that ever existed that defined a natural born citizen said that it was the case for children born abroad of two US citizens! And that law - passed in 1790 - was superseded in 1795 and removed. Clearly the founders (still the majority of Congress in 1790) deemed that natural born citizenship extended to a definition outside of Vattel, given the lack of location required to be a natural born citizen.
And that includes Ramsay.
Thus again, we get to the crux of the matter: what legal definition exists in the US Constitution, statutes, or settled law that defines what a natural born citizen is? Without that, at best you can argue it needs to be better defined but not that a person is excluded based upon a personal opinion. Lacking a legal definition to the contrary, I don't see how Ark does not hold sway.
From the letters of James Madison in his own words:
” Much information [he said] might be obtained by the experience of others, if, in despite of it we were not determined to be guided only by a visionary theory. The ancient republics of Greece and Rome [said he, see with what jealousy they guarded the rights of citizenship against adulteration by foreign mixture. The Swiss nation [lie said, in modern times, had not been less jealous on the name subject. Indeed, no example could be found, in the history of man, to authorize the experiment which had been made by the United States. It seemed to have been adopted by universal practice as a maxim, that the republican character was in no way to be formed “not by early education. In some instances, to form this character, those propensities which are generally considered as almost irresistible, were appeased and subdued. And shall we [he asked] alone adopt the rash theory, that the subjects of all governments, despotic, monarchical, and aristocratical, are, as soon as they set foot on American ground, qualified to participate in administering the sovereignty of our country? Shall we hold the benefits of American citizenship so cheap as to invite, nay, to almost bribe, the discontented, the ambitious, and the avaricious of every country, to accept them ?”
” Every species of government has its specific principle. Ours are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchyyet from such we are to expect the greatest number of immigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the government they imbibed in their early youth; or if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, and distracted mass.”
As you can see, the founders/framers were very deeply concerned with children of aliens being educated in foreign practices and rightfully so. They were against all laws of a monarchy & that included the feudal definition of natural born subject being imposed on a person. this was NOT the practice of a free society where citizenship was derived through heredity or consent. You can not inherit what is not there. England pretty much quit using their original constitution when they adopted feudal law, which defined the feudal definition of 'natural born subject'. This definition was not that of the freeman/English Saxon's that formed the country of England. I suggest you might want to spend some time on the history of merry ole England, because the framers & founders were quite learned in the mother country's rich history where the men were once free & sovereign, not subject to an all powerful sovereign king or queen. But you'll have to go back before the Norman conquest when the Constitution was 1st drafted to really understand what the founders meant when they said they looked to the ancient ages when the laws of nature which are the laws of God that defined who a citizen was. It didn't start with Vattel, Vattel merely further expounded on what the greats of Aristotle, Cicero, Puffendorf, Grotius and all the others who wrote of the laws of nature. If you read Aristotle, you would see that his words are Vattel's words. If you read Grotius, the same as well as all the others.
Not quite, it said such persons would be considered as "natural born citizens", not that they were. But at best it was an attempt to extend the preexisting definition. Something Congress cannot do, and in 1795 they took out the "Natural Born" language. No one who would have been so "considered" ever became President, and since the law no longer provided that, it's now moot.
But just because they tried to extend the meaning, doesn't mean that there *was* a meaning outside of Vattel's., it just indicates that whatever the understood meaning, it did not, in general at least, include those born to citizens outside the country. Clearly it did include some such, children of ambassadors for example.