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I liked the explanation offered by a Freeper several days ago.

The crux of the matter is the tense of the words “born” and “naturalized”.
The slaves brought to the colonies in chains were never citizens
of the US and so their children were similarly stateless. Neither
parents nor children were ever citizens of the United States in
1865. With the end of the Civil War, Congress had to create a legal
bridge to citizenship that first allowed former slaves and their
children to become “naturalized”. Generations to follow would
then become “natural born” citizens. So the tense of the Amendment
is important; those (already) born or naturalized (in the past)
and subject to the jurisdictions thereof were henceforth citizens.
This was clearly a reference to the former slaves and their children.

Just my 2 cents...

T., You are supposing Dred Scott was rightly decided. This was never the Republican position. However, Dred Scott was a Supreme Court decision and the Republicans needed a constitutional amendment to eradicate it.

So, regardless of whether Dred Scott was rightly decided, the 14th Amendment wanted to make it clear that, as of the ratification of the amendment, Americans of African descent were citizens. The constitutional question is whether this amendment, perhaps inadvertently, grants birthright citizenship to yet other people.

The Supreme Court, in Wong Kim Ark, decided that children born here of permanent resident aliens were indeed subject to the jurisdiction of here and, so, they had birthright citizenship.

But, the Supreme Court has never ruled whether children born here to aliens legally here as tourists have birthright citizenship, nor has the Supreme Court ruled whether children born here to aliens illegally here have birthright citizenship. Whether these categories of people have birthright citizenship would seem to depend on what is the meaning of subject to the jurisdiction? Whatever it means, permanent aliens have it; but, do temporary aliens and do illegal aliens have it?

Finally, I will note that the Trump administration is asking for the decision to be prospective only.