You're probably referring to this part:
"And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States"
That congress didn't address the question of the status of persons born within the limits of the United States to foreign born parents. Other parts of the law that you're citing skirt the issue:
"and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States. And the children of such person so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under the age of twenty one years at the time of such naturalization, shall also be considered as citizens of the United States."
So the living children of a naturalized citizen who themselves were under the age of 21 years also became citizens by dint of their father's naturalization.
What that congress didn't address was the question of the country of birth of the children. This can, and has, been used to support both sides of this perennial debate.
One thing is clear though. That first congress did think it important to clarify that the children of an American citizen born abroad were to be legally considered "natural born citizens". But all of this got effectively tossed out the window with a SCOTUS case in 1898, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649. That case hashed out exactly the same "debate" that goes on at FR every four years, regarding the meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction". The losing side in that case took the same view as many posters here, but it's not like the court hasn't had the discussion.
The added special sauce that gets tossed into the mix is to wonder if there's some undecided ambiguity about the meaning of "natural born citizen", apart from "a citizen who is a citizen and never needed to be naturalized because he was always a citizen".
No one has been able to come up with a compelling argument for that, and it's certainly not for lack of trying. It's a nice distracton on a lazy Sunday afternoon, though.
“And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens”
Thanks for making my point. The Act had to do with alien naturalization, and they only became citizens after natualization. The children born to citizen parents became natural born citizens.
That verbiage got pulled out in 1795. Apparently people pointed out the contradiction of someone being a "natural" citizen through an artificial statute.
And of course "shall be considered as" does not mean the same thing as "is."
Two quarters and a half dollar "shall be considered as" equal, and they are in terms of value, but they are not the same thing.
A more close analogy is adoption of children.
While an adopted child "shall be considered as" a child of the family, they are not actually blood descendants of the family.