Speaker of the House of Representatives, Langdon Cheves, in February of 1814:
The children have a natural attachment to the society in which they are born: being obliged to acknowledge the protection it has granted to their fathers, they are obliged to it in a great measure for their birth and education. … We have just observed that they have a right to enter into the society of which their fathers were members. But every man born free, the son of a citizen, arrived at years of discretion, may examine whether it be convenient for him to join in the society for which he was destined by his birth.
Rep. A. Smyth (VA), House of Representatives, December 1820:
When we apply the term “citizens” to the inhabitants of States, it means those who are members of the political community. The civil law determined the condition of the son by that of the father. A man whose father was not a citizen was allowed to be a perpetual inhabitant, but not a citizen, unless citizenship was conferred on him.
The constitutional requirement for the President of the United States to be a natural-born citizen had one purpose according to St. George Tucker:
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, which, wherever it is capable of being exerted, is to he dreaded more than the plague.
The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which foreign nations have been accustomed to, attach ideas of sovereign power, sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most consummate policy and wisdom.
… The title of king, prince, emperor, or czar, without the smallest addition to his powers, would have rendered him a member of the fraternity of crowned heads: their common cause has more than once threatened the desolation of Europe.
To have added a member to this sacred family in America, would have invited and perpetuated among us all the evils
of Pandora’s Box.
http://federalistblog.us/2008/11/natural-born_citizen_defined.html
Those old white guys knew a thing or two about human nature and about how loyalty and patriotism are ingrained into a child. One can even go back to Moses, who was given over to the Egyptians at age THREE (presumably after he was weaned from his mother, who was his nurse in the Egyptian palace). Still, he retained a heart loyalty to the Jews and at age FORTY, rose up to defend his people.