Rawle’s stepdad was a Loyalist. And I may have been a bit harsh to DL, as some sources actually say that he was a Loyalist during the Revolution as well. He might have been, due to his stepfather’s influence. But he was barely 17 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed. And the source that DL quoted stated that Rawle felt a “sense of humiliation over his family’s British sympathies.” So perhaps the bottom line is that we don’t 100% understand all of his feelings on the matter as a teenager. They may well have changed.
Rawle went to England during the War, at age 22, and toured Europe, and after spending two years abroad returned to the United States. By this time the War was certainly winding down, and if Rawle had been a Loyalist before, he certainly doesn’t seem to have been one now. Why would a Loyalist leave England to go to live forever in the United States? Doesn’t make any sense.
One author writes: “Whatever Loyalist tendencies the young Rawle had did not last. After returning from England in 1783, he expressed his commitment to the United States. George Washington even offered to make him attorney general, an offer which Rawle declined. Rawle seemed to have little interest in a career in politics, but he was a strong Federalist.”
So by 1783, it was clear that young Rawle was all in for the United States of America, and he spent the rest of his life here, becoming a respected leader. By 1787 and the summer of the Constitutional Convention, he was obviously quite thick with both George Washington and Ben Franklin.
So Rawle was EXTREMELY well positioned to know exactly what the Framers of the Constitution meant by “natural born citizen.”
Given his circumstances at the time of the war of Independence, it is not reasonable to assume (in the absence of evidence) he held different political beliefs from that of his family. Of course he was a loyalist at the time, but he eventually changed his mind. The bigger issue is his training in British law, which mostly translates to American law just fine, but with the exception of Citizen/Subject law, where the American principle is in strong contradiction with the English principle.
So Rawle was EXTREMELY well positioned to know exactly what the Framers of the Constitution meant by “natural born citizen.”
Except I don't think they discussed this. I will freely acknowledge that some people of the era (such as Rawles) believed that Subjectship/Citizenship is the direct result of WHERE you were born, while others (Dr. David Ramsey) believed that it was inherited from the parents as being part of their civic nature.
That people could believe such drastically different things can be explained in only one way of which I can conceive. Each thought the other shared their own opinion, and in absence of discussion or clarification, they continued to hold their respective beliefs. Because they believed themselves to all be in agreement as to what was the meaning of the term, they felt no need to discuss it.
The salient question is this. What did the Constitutional Conventioners and Ratifiers believe? I think they believed what made sense. That the Presidency should be reserved for only the strictest interpretation of citizenship; For someone who has no divided loyalties whatsoever. For someone whom no other nation can lay a recognized claim upon.
They were well familiar with the Royal inbreeding of the Crowned heads of Europe. They knew full well how one nation would gain advantage in the Monarchy of another by blood ties of allegiance to another nation. Often the Monarch of England was a German.
I believe they prudently wanted to avoid such conflicts in our Executive office.