Forgive me. I've been reading this thread for 4 days and my head is spinning. But, wasn't it the OPPOSITE case? The law was written so that Alexander Hamilton COULD NOT run for President?
1.Birthplace: Nevis, British West Indies
1.Birthplace: Nevis, British West Indies
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
1) Hamilton was a Citizen of the U.S. at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.
2) He was not natural born because he was born in the Caribbean, but he was a Citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. Therefore he would not be excluded from the Presidency, which would happen to all citizens naturalized after the adoption of the Constitution. Note the first part of the Constitution passage I bolded above. It does not require those who met it to be natural born.
3) Since Hamilton arrived in Boston in 1772, he would be in the U.S. over fourteen years. This would meet the second bolded part qualification.
4) He would also have to meet the 35 year qualification, which he would only meet in 1790 or 1792. There is controversy about his year of birth, but even if he was born in 1757 he would 35 by the election of 1792.
5) Of course anyone else who also was a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution would meet that qualification, but Alexander Hamilton was there representing the State of New York himself. I am not aware if anyone else at the Philadelphia Convention was not born in the thirteen colonies. Perhaps someone else will know if there was someone else.
Yeah, me too. Do we some special kind of achievement for reading this thread from beginning to end?
But, wasn't it the OPPOSITE case? The law was written so that Alexander Hamilton COULD NOT run for President?
Hamilton was for the same sorts of things that led to the Federal Reserve act, so I would presume so. It was probably a Good Thing that he died in the duel with Vice President Burr. At least it allowed us to become a world power before the banksters got their teeth into us.
No, Hamilton was a citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of the Constitution. Just because he wasn't born in one of the thirteen colonies, does not mean he wasn't "grandfathered", just like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and several more had been.
OTOH, if they'd only allowed "natural born citizens" the first eligible person would have been born in 1776 or 1781 (the country was called the United States of America, in the Declaration of Independence, and in the Articles of Confederation, passed in 1787, but not formally ratified until 1781. But taking the earliest date, 1776, it would have been 1811, before any Natural Born Citizen would be eligible for President. And that is the reason for the grandfather clause of "or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" clause. Many of the signers of both the Declaration and the Constitution were not born in those 13 colonies.