Here's what Chief Justice Fuller said in dissent:
-snip-
"These considerations lead to the conclusion that the rule in respect of citizenship of the United States prior to the Fourteenth Amendment differed from the English common law rule in vital particulars, and, among others, in that it did not recognize allegiance as indelible, and in that it did recognize an essential difference between birth during temporary, and birth during permanent, residence. If children born in the United States were deemed presumptively and generally citizens, this was not so when they were born of aliens whose residence was merely temporary, either in fact or in point of law.
Did the Fourteenth Amendment impose the original English common law rule as a rigid rule on this country?
Did the amendment operate to abridge the treaty-making power, or the power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization?
I insist that it cannot be maintained that this Government is unable, through the action of the President, concurred in by the Senate, to make a treaty with a foreign government providing that the subjects of that government, although allowed to enter the United States, shall not be made citizens thereof, and that their children shall not become such citizens by reason of being born therein.
A treaty couched in those precise terms would not be incompatible with the Fourteenth Amendment unless it be held that that amendment has abridged the treaty-making power.
Nor would a naturalization law excepting persons of a certain race and their children be invalid unless the amendment has abridged the power of naturalization. This cannot apply to our colored fellow-citizens, who never were aliens -- were never beyond the jurisdiction of the United States.
"Born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," and "naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," mean born or naturalized under such circumstances as to be completely subject to that jurisdiction, that is as completely as citizens of the United States, [p730] who are, of course, not subject to any foreign power, and can of right claim the exercise of the power of the United States on their behalf wherever they may be. When, then, children are born in the United States to the subjects of a foreign power, with which it is agreed by treaty that they shall not be naturalized thereby, and as to whom our own law forbids them to be naturalized, such children are not born so subject to the jurisdiction as to become citizens, and entitled on that ground to the interposition of our Government, if they happen to be found in the country of their parents' origin and allegiance, or any other.
Turning to the treaty between the United States and China, concluded July 28, 1868, the ratifications of which were exchanged November 28, 1869, and the proclamation made February 5, 1870, we find that, by its sixth article, it was provided:
Citizens of the United States visiting or residing in China shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities or exemptions in respect of travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation. And, reciprocally, Chinese subjects residing in the United States shall enjoy the same privileges, immunities and exemptions in respect to travel or residence as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation. But nothing herein contained shall be held to confer naturalization on the citizens of the United States in China, nor upon the subjects of China in the United States.
It is true that, in the fifth article, the inherent right of man to change his home or allegiance was recognized, as well as
the mutual advantage of the free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects, respectively, from the one country to the other, for the purposes of curiosity, of traffic, or as permanent residents.
All this, however, had reference to an entirely voluntary emigration for these purposes, and did not involve an admission of change of allegiance unless both countries assented, but the contrary, according to the sixth article.
By the convention of March 17, 1894, it was agreed
that Chinese laborers or Chinese of any other class, either permanently [p731] or temporarily residing within the United States, shall have for the protection of their persons and property all rights that are given by the laws of the United States to citizens of the most favored nation, excepting the right to become naturalized citizens.
These treaties show that neither Government desired such change, nor assented thereto. Indeed, if the naturalization laws of the United States had provided for the naturalization of Chinese persons, China manifestly would not have been obliged to recognize that her subjects had changed their allegiance thereby. But our laws do not so provide, and, on the contrary, are in entire harmony with the treaties.
I think it follows that the children of Chinese born in this country do not, ipso facto, become citizens of the United States unless the Fourteenth Amendment overrides both treaty and statute. Does it bear that construction, or rather is it not the proper construction that all persons born in the United States of parents permanently residing here and susceptible of becoming citizens, and not prevented therefrom by treaty or statute, are citizens, and not otherwise
But the Chinese, under their form of government, the treaties and statutes, cannot become citizens, nor acquire a permanent home here, no matter what the length of their stay may be. Wharton Confl.Laws, § 1.
In Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698, 717, it was said in respect of the treaty of 1868:
After some years' experience under that treaty, the Government of the United States was brought to the opinion that the presence within our territory of large numbers of Chinese laborers, of a distinct race and religion, remaining strangers in the land, residing apart by themselves, tenaciously adhering to the customs and usages of their own country, unfamiliar with our institutions, and apparently incapable of assimilating with our people, might endanger good order and be injurious to the public interests, and therefore requested and obtained from China a modification of the treaty."
-end snip-
There's more...
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0169_0649_ZD.html
I agree. It was United States v. Wong Kim Ark that violated the Supremacy Clause in respects to the treaty.
For reasons we all understand.