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This construct was not new. At the time of adoption of the 14th this was the traditional way it worked. We inherited our rules from England, which operated the same way.

We explicitly did NOT inherit our rules from England. We explicitly eschewed English Subject law in recognizing the condition of US Citizenship.

It's just that many Lawyers (such as William Rawle) Deliberately misled the public on this score in the early 19th century, and the consequences of their deliberately misleading the public have informed subsequent lawmakers in erroneous thinking.

The Claim that we followed English law was a tactic used by the early abolitionists to get slaves declared as citizens, and this is why they were deliberately misleading everyone regarding the condition of US Citizenship. (William Rawle was the President of the Pennsylvania Abolition society.)

This is why the Supreme Court said in Minor v Happersett that:

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. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.

These people pushing the English Law claims were those "Some authorities" which went "further". They were doing it in a good cause, but they were still lying about it, at least the original ones were.