LOL! There is a great deal of Blackstone out there to post. I provided the link precisely to supply anyone an opportunity to review the full context. The context you bring in is helpful but does not alter the central point at all. If anyone tells you the edge cases are not law, then you have been under very different legal instruction than I have been. The history of how a principle came to be is interesting, but once the principle is there, that’s what you have to deal with, and the fact remains that Blackstone’s use of “natural born” to describe foreign born children is clear evidence that this kind of edge case was not entirely alien (pardon the pun) to the founders’ frame of reference. Which again, BTW, give even greater weight to the NBC language used by the founders in the 1790 Act. It is nearly a perfect symmetry with the Blackstone account.
Peace,
SR
Rep. John A. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes (1866) said:
it means every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.
John A. Bingham (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))
John Armor Bingham (January 21, 1815-March 19, 1900) was an American Republican congressman from the U.S. state of Ohio, judge advocate in the trial of the Abraham Lincoln assassination and a prosecutor in the impeachment trials of Andrew Johnson. He is also the principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The first section of the second article of the Constitution uses the language, a natural-born citizen. It thus assumes that citizenship may be acquired by birth. Undoubtedly, this language of the Constitution was used in reference to that principle of public law, well understood in this country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, which referred citizenship to the place of birth.
Justice Curtis in his dissenting opinion of the Dred Scott decision and speaking specifically of natural born citizens and article II, section I, clause 5
It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will therefore be unnecessary to investigate any other.
James Madison
The doctrine of the common law is that every man born within its jurisdiction is a subject of the sovereign of the country where he is born, and allegiance is not personal to the sovereign in the extent that has been contended for; it is due to him in his political capacity of sovereign of the territory where the person owing the allegiance as born.
Kilham v. Ward 2 Mass. 236, 26 (1806)
As the President is required to be a native citizen of the United States. Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States.
James Kent, COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW (1826)
That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, A very respectable political writer makes the following pertinent remarks upon this subject. Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it.
St. George Tucker, BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES (1803)
Allegiance is nothing more than the tie or duty of obedience of a subject to the sovereign under whose protection he is, and allegiance by birth is that which arises from being born within the dominions and under the protection of a particular sovereign. Two things usually concur to create citizenship: first, birth locally within the dominions of the sovereign, and secondly, birth within the protection and obedience, or, in other words, within the allegiance of the sovereign.That the father and mother of the demandant were British born subjects is admitted. If he was born before 4 July, 1776, it is as clear that he was born a British subject. If he was born after 4 July, 1776, and before 15 September, 1776 [the date the British occupied New York], he was born an American citizen, whether his parents were at the time of his birth British subjects or American citizens. Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government and owing a temporary allegiance thereto are subjects by birth.
Justice Story, concurring opinion,Inglis v. Sailorsâ Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155,164. (1830)
The country where one is born, how accidental soever his birth in that place may have been, and although his parents belong to another country, is that to which he owes allegiance. Hence the expression natural born subject or citizen, & all the relations thereout growing. To this there are but few exceptions, and they are mostly introduced by statutes and treaty regulations, such as the children of seamen and ambassadors born abroad, and the like.
Leake v. Gilchrist, 13 N.C. 73 (N.C. 1829)
Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.
William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States, pg. 86 (1829)
The right of citizenship never descends in the legal sense, either by the common law or under the common naturalization acts. It is incident to birth in the country, or it is given personally by statute. The child of an alien, if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle
Horace Binney, American Law Register, 2 Amer.Law Reg.193, 203, 204, 206, 208 (February 1854).
That all natural born citizens, or persons born within the limits of the United States, and all aliens subject to the restrictions hereinafter mentioned, may inherit real estate and make their pedigree by descent from any ancestor lineal or collateral.
January 28, 1838, Acts of the State of Tennessee passed at the General Assembly, pg. 266 (1838)
The term citizen, was used in the constitution as a word, the meaning of which was already established and well understood. And the constitution itself contains a direct recognition of the subsisting common law principle, in the section which defines the qualification of the President. The only standard which then existed, of a natural born citizen, was the rule of the common law, and no different standard has been adopted since. Suppose a person should be elected President who was native born, but of alien parents, could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the constitution? I think not.
Lynch vs. Clarke (NY 1844)
Every person, then, born in the country, and that shall have attained the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States, is eligible to the office of president.
Lysander Spooner, The Unconstitionality of Slavery, pg. 119 (1845)
It is the very essence of the condition of a natural born citizen, of one who is a member of the state by birth within and under it, that his rights are not derived from the mere will of the state.
The New Englander, Vol. III, pg. 434 (1845)
This is called becoming naturalized; that is, becoming entitled to all the rights and privileges of natural born citizens, or citizens born in this country.
Andrew White Young, First lessons in Civil Government, pg. 82 (1856).
The Constitution itself does not make the citizens, (it is. in fact,made by them.) It only intends and recognizes such of them as are naturalâ€â€home-bornâ€â€and provides for the naturalization of such of them as were alienâ€â€foreign-bornâ€â€making the latter, as far as nature will allow, like the former.
Attorney General Bates, Opinion of Citizenship, (1862)
All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England.
Justice Swayne, United States v. Rhodes, 1 Abbott, US 28 (Cir. Ct. Ky 1866)
Natural-born Citizens, those that are born within the jurisdiction of a national government; i.e., in its territorial limits, or those born of citizens, temporarily residing abroad.
William Cox Cochran, The student's law lexicon: a dictionary of legal words and phrases : with appendices, Pg. 185 (1888)
Citizens are either natural-born or naturalized. One who is born in the United States or under its jurisdiction is a natural-born citizen without reference to the nationality of his parents. Their presence here constitutes a temporary allegiance, sufficient to make a child a citizen.
Theodore Dwight, Edward Dwight, Commentaries on the law of persons and personal property, pg. 125 (1894)
The notion that there is any common law principle to naturalize the children born in foreign countries, of native-born American father and mother, father or mother, must be discarded. There is not, and never was, any such common law principle.
Binney on Alienigenae, 14, 20; 2 Amer.Law Reg.199, 203