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But as citizens were defined, and were different in each state, the Constitution said, in effect “You states don't get to argue over the qualifications for the President. He must be born on the soil of citizen parents, a resident for 14 years and 35 years old.” When it became important to a case, the court confirmed that definition. Was it not a definition before Justice Waite told us it was never doubted?

This is the money quote right here. Because we were a collection of states with different citizenship rules, the citizenship of the president had to be a type of citizenship that was without doubt and without potential foreign entanglement, such as through parents of differing nationalities, whether the marriage was legitimate or not. Vattel's definition is a perfect, neutral definition.

The other thing I like to emphasize is that the founders absolutely did not adopt English common law because it required perpetual allegiance and did not allow expatriation. The only way they could consider themselves to be U.S. citizens was by rejecting the common law definition of citizenship. What they ended up with has similarities, but it is not the same. Gray blurred this issue to give teeth to the 14th amendment, but he strictly avoided redefining natural-born citizenship. The latter he respected from the unanimous Minor decision: all children born in the country to parents who were its citizens. If this argument is made to the judge in Georgia, Obama is toast, regardless of his birth certificates, jpgs and layered PDFs.

“Gray blurred this issue to give teeth to the 14th amendment, “

This is the problem with Wong Kim Ark. People running around pretending to know how to read the law espousing this and that and making crap up and pretending it is true. Your quote is ridiculous.

Gray slaughtered the 14th Amendment.

This is why I rarely get involved in the discussion of Wong Kim Ark.
The position that you really want is the one that was set forth by the architects of the 14th Amendment NOT THE ARK DECISION. The architects had a more restrictive intent.

It is important to note that they were trying to keep citizenship away from Indians and this effected the language.

You might want to educate yourself about how Gray slaughtered the 14th Amendment. here is a discussion about the Senators involved with developing the language of the 14th amendment

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2139082/posts

Btw, there was a treaty that was ratified by Senators who also adopted the 14th Amendment.

Justice Gray ignored that treaty.

The interesting concept - that I havent really looked into - is that of Lynch V Clarke. Wong Kim Ark mentions that case in the lower court and by SCOTUS. Was it really overturned by the 14th Amendment as some claim. I don’t know.