“The Wong Kim Ark decision affirmed this definition and said that the Supreme Court was committed to the idea that the children born in the country to citizen parents were EXCLUDED from the operation of the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment. “
Prove it. Show the passage that says that!
That neither Mr. Justice Miller nor any of the justices who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the Court, delivered but two years later ...
The Slaughterhouse Cases listed a couple of basic exceptions to the subject clause of the 14th amendment. Gray makes a point here that this list can't be assumed to be comprehensive and that you have to look at other cases when certain aspects of an issue aren't examined. In Minor, they defined NBC. In Elk v. Wilkins, they excluded Indians from the subject clause of the 14th amendment. Neither of these were considered in Slaughterhouse. But the same judges in Slaughterhouse that were divided were NOT divided in Minor. They UNANIMOUSLY rejected Virginia Minor's claim of being a 14th amendment citizen because she met the court's definition of natural born. This is why Gray says the court was committed to excluding NBCs ("all children born in the United States of citizens") from the citizen clause of the 14th amendment. In the next paragraph he gives the Minor definition of NBC. In the paragraph after that, he summarized the Minor definition, citing both JUS SOLI and JUS SANGUINIS criteria:
Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, although not entitled to vote, the right to the elective franchise not being essential to citizenship.
In the next paragraph (now we have at least four paragraphs that now support each other), Gray cites Elk:
The only adjudication that has been made by this court upon the meaning of the clause, "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," in the leading provision of the Fourteenth Amendment is Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, in which it was decided that an Indian born a member of one of the Indian tribes within the United States, which still existed and was recognized as an Indian tribe by the United States, who had voluntarily separated himself from his tribe and taken up his residence among the white citizens of a State but who did not appear to have been naturalized, or taxed, or in any way recognized or treated as a citizen either by the United States or by the State, was not a citizen of the United States, as a "person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" within the meaning of the clause in question.
That decision was placed upon the grounds that the meaning of those words was not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance;
From this point forward, Gray does NOT say anything more about natural-born citizens. He had a definition that could NOT be applied to Wong Kim Ark.