The founders did not encode that into the Constitution nor into the U.S. Code while they were alive. Since they were so precise in their language (particularly Madison), I find it odd that they did not make explicit in the Constitution nor in their writings.
What was encoded in the Constitution in plain language was the Fourteenth Amendment.
I find it odd that people want to scry out Vattel in a miasmic mix of translations, nuances and subtleties with the phrase “natural born citizen”, and yet they discount the very plain language in the fourteenth amendment.
Conservatives should know better than to try to make words and phrases mean what they want them to mean and ignore plain language when it is evident.
Did the Founders translate naturels to natural born?
So tell me, do you know what a Blackberry is?
Of course you do, we all do. So much so we don’t even have to define it when we speak of it. Oh... but which one am I speaking of??? ... yea EXACTLY.
200 years from now, do you think that someone reading this very post will know what I meant by “Blackberry”? If you answer yes, then you have just shot your argument in the foot. If you say no, then at least you are honest in recognizing that the terminology of a given time period can be lost in history.
The term “Natural Born Citizen” was COMMON in the 1700’s. Why you ask? Because there were wars going on all over the place, with sailors and fighting men widely dispersed. Nations HAD to know the citizenship status of a given individual so as to ascertain whether or not they had RIGHT to claim the benefits that Nation had to offer!
These details MATTERED to Nations in far more specific detail at a finer grained level than they do today. Shoot, being a bastard of a french woman in Britain in 1725 with no known father would be French, but if Dad showed up, and he was say German, then that child would be german. Which Nation was beholden to that poor bastard? British? German? French?
THAT is why the term “Natural Born Citizen” mattered. It meant your parents were BOTH citizens AND you were born on that soil. That child would have certainty of citizenship that can be guaranteed in no other way. It MATTERED then. It STILL does today, and Obama’s usurpation of the White House is PROOF.