Replies

Excellent essay. I would like to take issue with some of the facts relating to the contested election of William Loughton Smith to congress (1788).

You wrote:

"Before answering that question, consider the case of Congressman Smith. He was born in South Carolina before the American Revolution. At the time of the Revolution, he was not yet an adult. His parents were British loyalists, and fought against the Revolution. But after the Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution in 1788, he was elected to Congress. But his right to be seated was challenged on the basis that he was not a citizen, due to the actions of his parents."

William Loughton Smith (b. 1758), was sent to England by his father Benjamin in 1770 at the age of 12 years. Later that same year, his father died, a British subject, six years prior to the Declaration of Independence. Smith's mother died in 1760. William Smith did not return to America until 1783, after the bloody fight for our freedom was finished.

Ramsay basically asserted correctly that Smith's father Benjamin could not have passed U.S. Citizenship to his son as he died six years prior to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

I believe Mr. Jackson in reply to Mr. Madison's argument, said it best:

The case was decided by vote in committee in favor of Smith, with the objections of Mr. Jackson as noted above. Political considerations seem to have trumped reason in this case, as there is no possible way that Smith could have been considered a U.S. Citizen prior to the year 1783, when he arrived in the newly created United States as a young man in his twenties.

Bert, Bert, of course we are correct.

But what, my good man, does that have to do with anything? The Usurper sits in the WH and the cowards of the SCOTUS sit on their hands. No Republican elected representative or candidate will forthrightly address the issue. To paraphrase the extremely well-tailored millionaire drunkard who speaks for the Republican House of Representatives, "The State of Hawaii said he was born there and that's good enough for me."

I have come to the point where I don't even want their opinions. All I want is that someone ... anyone... in a position of representative responsibility to say, "Ya know, I don't know. That's a matter for the Supreme Court."

I have maintained from the beginning that the issue will have to be settled by one or two brave STATE election officials. We are grasping at the Georgia situation as a drowning man grasps at a straw. Has no one stopped to think that any State Attorney General has the absolute right to throw this man (or any man) from his state's ballot right now, forcing the issue to the courts? Out of 50 states are there not 10 Secretaries of State ...lawyers all ... who agree with the view left to us as a legacy of Roman and English law? That is a "Natural Born Citizen," is a citizen both of whose parents were citizens at the time of his birth.

But Madison argued that Congressman Smith's birth in South Carolina is all that mattered, because his place of birth came under the sovereignty of of the United States when the US came into existence.

No event subsequent to his birth extinguished Congressman Smith's citizenship in the sovereign state of South Carolina—which, since he was born there and his parents were citizens of the state, meant he was a subject born of South Carolina.

Madison's argument was that any citizen (natural or not) of South Carolina became a natural US citizen at the moment the US became sovereign over South Carolina, provided allegiance to the US was accepted by that citizen. Not a natural born citizen—because the parents would not have been citizens of the US when the person was born—but nevertheless a citizen by natural law, and not by any official act of naturalization.

Without a naturalization law that made Congressman Smith a citizen, and without his having duly undergone the naturalization process specified by such a law, his citizenship cannot be by means of naturalization, but can only be natural citizenship by the operation of natural law.

Right or wrong, that was Madison's argument. And it applies with equal force and legitimacy to all other citizens of the several States, whether they were at home or abroad at the moment the US came into existence. To be logically consistent, either all who were citizens of any of the several States and didn't reject allegiance to the US when it acquired soveignty over their State were citizens of the US by natural law, or none were. If none were, then all would have needed to be naturalized in order to be citizens.