I conceive that every person who owed this primary allegiance to the particular community in which he was born retained his right of birth, as the member of a new community;
that he was consequently absolved from the secondary allegiance he had owed to the British sovereign:
Clearly, independence changed to whom loyalty and citizenship ran because the identity of the sovereign changed, but it did not change the rules that determined citizenship itself. Did people who were previously citizens of Massachusetts because they were born there somehow shift to being a non-citizen after independence? No. In fact, the Constitution doesn't define citizenship at all, and the only law in effect in the Colonies that could reasonably be assumed to define citizenship was the exact same pure birthright citizenship to which all the colonists had been subject under English law. It was all they knew.
But again what Madison or any other Framer may have held for an opinion isn't relevant. Power comes from the people, so it is their reasonable understanding of the normal meaning of those words, in the context of their time, that matters. You can't slip some ideosyncratic definition of citizenship into the Constitution silently, based on the unwritten opinions of some of the people involved in its drafting. the citizenship of their parents was suddenly an issue?
Subjective loyalties?? A primary allegiance is NOT a subjective loyalty.
When Madison says "I conceive that every person who owed this primary allegiance to the particular community in which he was born retained his right of birth, as the member of a new community;" the only way that such persons are members is through their parents. That's how one has a 'right of birth.' It's why Madison said:
Mr. Smith founds his claim upon his birthright; his ancestors were among the first settlers of that colony.Clearly, independence changed to whom loyalty and citizenship ran because the identity of the sovereign changed, but it did not change the rules that determined citizenship itself.
Nonsense. If the King of England agreed with this, there wouldn't have been a war.
Did people who were previously citizens of Massachusetts because they were born there somehow shift to being a non-citizen after independence?
What???? No one said anyone becomes a "non-citizen." Way to twist the argument.
In fact, the Constitution doesn't define citizenship at all, and the only law in effect in the Colonies that could reasonably be assumed to define citizenship was the exact same pure birthright citizenship to which all the colonists had been subject under English law. It was all they knew.
English law wasn't all they knew. Plenty of evidence has shown that the founders used the law of nations, which is actually referenced in the Constitution.
But again what Madison or any other Framer may have held for an opinion isn't relevant.
Bwaahhhhh????? It was certainly relevant to the Supreme Court when it defined NBC:
At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.