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How do you suppose the Secretary of State in 1854, William Marcy, got it so wrong?

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40C13FD3E59157493C2AB1788D85F408584F9

It's not that he was unschooled in the law--he was admitted to the bar and served on the New York Supreme Court.

Very Interesting. I will add your link as a third piece of evidence in support of your position. It is becoming evident to me that there is indeed a long standing misunderstanding among various people in history regarding citizenship in the United States.

Evidence cannot be dismissed just because it doesn't fit what people wish to believe, and I now know of three examples that contradict the "jus sanguinus" perspective on this issue. The first one I could ignore as an outlier, the second caused me to suspect that maybe this wasn't so clearly understood by the founding Generations, and now the third one you have provided has confirmed my suspicion that something is definitely wrong, and so I pondered a bit to try and figure out what is wrong.

I've been thinking about writing an article to address this very point. I think when article II was voted on by the Constitutional delegation, those that were intimately familiar with Vattel, (John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, read and spoke fluent French.) recognized in it the Vattel definition, (They received French Versions of Vattel prior to the war) while those less familiar with it, assumed it to be derived from English Common law, which all states used for citizenship prior to the War.

Everyone voted on what they thought it meant, assuming everyone else believed the same thing they did. Likewise, subsequently through history, people who believed that this Section of English Common law was replaced by American law based on Vattel, repeated this definition, while those that were unfamiliar with this aspect, continued to believe that English Common law was the rule.

That in a nutshell appears to me to explain why there is discrepancies between what various people claim it means throughout history, some claiming the Citizen Parents are the crux of it, while others claiming only the location is important. There is overlap on this as well, because English Common law ALSO accepted Children born out of England, so long as they had an English Father.

The Fact that we kept so much of English law when American law was created only helps to confuse the issue. Whenever an issue isn't certain, or there is no American Precedent, they ALWAYS used English law to fill in the blanks. I think they have been wrongly doing this from the very beginning,(regarding citizenship) and the confusion has persisted as a result.

As I mentioned, If your goal is to grab servants, casting as wide a net as possible is a great idea. (Both soil and blood) But if your goal is to protect the nation from foreign influence, giving anyone citizenship just because they crossed your borders is a terrible idea. (As we are seeing all too clearly now with "anchor babies.")

I think the founders familiar with Vattels definition believed they were revoking English law regarding citizenship, and they believed the rest were aware of their intent. That the English common law version has persisted somewhat throughout history, indicates not everyone was up to speed on this.

You and I have been at odds on this issue from the very first post, but I do not recall any occasion of intellectual dishonesty from you. If you have some legitimate criticism of the above theory, I would be interested in looking at it.