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I didn't say Minor was a citizen of a different state than Happersett. I don't know where you came up with that one.

You miss the entire point of MvH. The question was not simply - does a woman have a right to vote? The question was - did the 14th amendment grant a woman the right to vote when it conferred citizenship upon "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof"?

The Court determined that women were citizens before the adoption of the 14th amendment but that prior to the 14th, the Constitution did not specifically describe who were citizens. So the Court undertook the task of determining who were citizens prior to the 14th.

To determine, then, who were citizens of the United States before the adoption of the amendment it is necessary to ascertain what persons originally associated themselves together to form the nation, and what were afterwards admitted to membership.

Before the Court could answer the question of whether or not suffrage was a privilege of citizenship, the Court first had to answer the question of who were citizens before the adoption of the 14th amendment.

If you cannot accept that premise as true then there is nothing more to discuss. Further, I've had enough of your snark. If and when you can accept the above the premise and do so politely, I'll be happy to continue the discussion. Otherwise, take your snark elsewhere.

The Court determined that women were citizens before the adoption of the 14th amendment but that prior to the 14th, the Constitution did not specifically describe who were citizens.

They went a little further than that. They said that women did NOT need the amendment to have the position of being a citizen, and they specifically said the 14th amendment did NOT confer citizenship on Virginia Minor because she already had it. The only way that argument stands and makes sense is by accepting that the class of citizenship that the court characterized as natural-born, was how Minor acquired her citizenship: by being born in the country to citizen parents. IMO, the Minor court went out of its way to show that natural-born citizenship was a separate class of citizenship that was neither affected by nor redefined by the 14th amendment. Gray's treatment of this case in Wong Kim Ark affirms and upholds the NBC definition by clearly emphasizing that Minor was born to citizen parents, and by saying that the 14th amendment does NOT say who shall be natural-born citizens.