Also, at the time of Jeffersons Death, nearly every State had an official, ENDORSED religion.
The liberals have completely distorted the 1st Amendment, partly through the tax code.
The fact is, the prohibitions on the Church in this country are the same as those on the Red Cross or on the YMCA: Non profits can't endorse!
That is tax law, not the 1st Amendment!
Anyway, Jefferson had his strong points, but what he said has been greatly distorted. Though Jefferson had trouble with organized religion, he was not an atheist, and Jefferson would be shocked to see the government so hostile to religion, as it is today.
The fact is, the prohibitions on the Church in this country are the same as those on the Red Cross or on the YMCA: Non profits can't endorse!
The point of Jefferson's letter was not prohibitions on the church, it was prohibitions on the government as regards "church." The liberal abuses that you suggest show up as calling schools "government," and student prayers "church," and therefore Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state" becomes teachers stopping student prayer in schools.
Anyway, we're straying from my original intent of citing Jefferson. I cited Jefferson as a non-Framer whose words were used to interpret the Constitution, in order to juxtapose non-Framer Paine's words in The Rights Of Man to interpret the Constitution. Paine wrote his words in 1791, Jefferson's was in 1801. Both were close enough to ratification to be considered contemporary.
You cited another quote from Madison in 1789, but Madison was referring to citizenship in general, which is not in dispute. It is the narrower natural born citizenship that is in question. Since the Constitution uses the two phrases separately, we must accept that a stricter interpretation was intended for the natural born citizen.
Your citation of 1795 is in reference to the state of Connecticutt, where the quote states that the children of non-citizens are considered as natural born as the children of citizens of Connecticutt. Since you just pointed out that the states had state-endorsed religions where the federal government was prohibited from sanctioning a single religion, it would be illogical to then argue that state-endorsed natural born citizen defines the federal definition of natural born citizen.
Your quote of 1805 is of general citizenship, which again, is not in dispute. It is irrelevant to natural born citizenship.The same for the quotes of 1806 and 1813, citizenship which is not disputed, but not relevant to natural born citizenship.
1826 #1 tries to equate "subject" with "citizen." There have been past discussions on the appropriateness if this analogy, so since this transfer of concept is in doubt, I won't rely on this one now.
1826 #2 is interesting. To repeat your citation:
“As the President is required to be a native citizen of the United States…. Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States.” James Kent, COMMENTARIES ON AMERICAN LAW (1826)
Let me refer you to this post from rxsid that shows the definitions of "native" and "natural" from 1789. This citation may be where we see the split in definitions between "natural" and "native," where the word "native" is defined and then substituted as if it were the word "natural" as used in the Constitution.
As an aside, I recently read some Paine artifacts from 1807 where I learned that he tried to vote in a local New York election, but was turned away by partisan poll inspectors who said that he was not a citizen. Paine contested this, threatening lawsuits, and wrote a letter to Vice President George Clinton to vouch for Paine's role in the American revolution. Paine asked Clinton to attest to the role that Paine's Common Sense and The American Crisis had on motivating the country to support independence, and then to stick with it during the hardships at Valley Forge.
Paine asked Clinton to do this because, as Paine wrote, "As it is a new generation that has risen up since the declaration of independence, they know nothing of what political state of the country was at the time of the pamphlet Common Sense appeared; and besides this there are but few of the old standers left, and none that I know of in this city." Paine continued, "I wish you would write a letter to some person stating from your own knowledge what the condition of those times were and the effect which the work Common Sense and the several numbers of the Crisis had upon the country."
I point this out to show that as early as 1807, people in New York were already forgetting the facts of what occurred just 30 years earlier.
How long after ratification in 1789 would it be before the details beyond what was in the Federalist Papers were lost to history?
-PJ