Well, no, that's not what the court is saying. The court did answer the question of the children of aliens in the following paragraphs because the question, as the court understood it, was for more than just Virginia Minor. Read and learn:
The direct question is, therefore, presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters.
See the part where it says "all citizens"??? This is why the court considered the wives and children of aliens in these paragraphs:
Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization Congress, as early as 1790, provided "that any alien, being a free white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be considered citizens of the United States ....And here:
As early as 1804 it was enacted by Congress that when any alien who had declared his intention to become a citizen in the manner provided by law died before he was actually naturalized, his widow and children should be considered as citizens of the United States, and entitled to all rights and privileges as such upon taking the necessary oath; [n10] and in 1855 it was further provided that any woman who might lawfully be naturalized under the existing laws, married, or [p169] who should be married to a citizen of the United States, should be deemed and taken to be a citizen. [n11]
From this it is apparent that from the commencement of the legislation upon this subject alien women and alien minors could be made citizens by naturalization, ...
Now, the other part you ignore is that the Minor's citizenship status was a part of the holding. Minor made an argument based on the 14th amendment, which the court unanimously rejected:
The argument is, that as a woman, born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen of the United States and of the State in which she resides, she has the right of suffrage as one of the privileges and immunities of her citizenship ...
The part underlined above is the citizen clause of the 14th amendment. Read how the court responds to Minor's argument:
in our opinion, it did not need this amendment to give them that position. Before its adoption the Constitution of the United States did not in terms prescribe who should be citizens of the United States or of the several States, yet there were necessarily such citizens without such provision.
The court deliberately used the NBC clause from Article II to reject Minor's 14th amendment argument. They didn't need to solve the doubts about citizenship of children born without reference to the citizenship of the parents for Minor, but they did solve those doubts anyway, by citing the passages I mentioned above. The most important part of this case, however, is that the court clearly showed that natural-born citizens did NOT need the 14th amendment to be citizens.
The fourteenth amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment. She has always been a citizen from her birth, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The amendment prohibited the State, of which she is a citizen, from abridging any of her privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States; but it did not confer citizenship on her.
What's noteworthy is that the court didn't address this issue simply about Virginia Minor but to women as a class. The court unanimously held that women did not have a right to vote, but as their citizenship was defined, they did have a right to run for president ... except for those who rely on the 14th amendment to be citizens, which is what we learned in the Wong Kim Ark decision. That latter decision affirms that Minor's citizenship is part of the holding, and not just dicta.
Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168. The decision in that case was that a woman born of citizen parents within the United States was a citizen of the United States, ...
Virginia Minor did NOT argue she was a citizen through her parents, nor did the Minor court say that she was born of citizen parents, but the Ark court DID say she was born of citizen parents. Why would they do this??
Nothing in your post contradicts what I said nor does it prove that the court in Minor v. Happersett ever made a ruling on the supposed NBC clause in the Constitution. The court rejected her 14th Amendment argument only because they interpreted that her citizenship was not in question. The court in Ark did the very same. The court in Minor v. Happersett did however ignore the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th, wrongly IMO, and the 19th Amendment made the whole ruling moot when women were deemed to have equal protection under the 14th and were granted the right to vote.
The court deliberately used the NBC clause from Article II to reject Minor's 14th amendment argument.
The NBC clause in Article II does not state anything about the citizenship of the parents. It simply states:
“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.”
This clause was necessary at the time of ratification so as to allow all citizens, even those who were not born on US soil but even to those who became citizens before ratification the very same citizenship status and granted them all eligibility to hold the office of POTUS.
If the Framers had in mind and intended that a natural born citizen meant something other than having been born in the US, intended that there was some sort of “third” type of citizenship of those born here and predicated on the citizenship status of their parents, they would have clearly stated so.
Call me a Constitutional “purest” but I believe the Constitution says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t.
Furthermore, the 14th states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Note that the 14th defines citizenship in only one of two ways; born or naturalized in the United States. It does not say those born in the United States to non-citizen parents, excepting those born to foreign diplomats have to undergo some other sort of “naturalization” process or meet any other test of their citizenship.