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I have no idea whether there has ever been a statute defining the term natural born. If such a statute existed at or about the time that the Constitution, then that fact might be relevant to an effort to determine what the Founders meant by natural born citizen. I guess that would depend on the context.

Do you know if there was such a statute then? Believe me, I would be open to a convincing argument that the Founders must have meant something more specific than what they said in the Constitution that they meant.

I really rather suspect that none of them thought it important enough to be more specific. They were dealing with some very important issues in that document. There were some big compromises on the table and while I think that their provision regarding natural born citizen indicated that they wanted there to be some significant connection between a president and this country, I am not sure how much time they spent on the details of that connection. I forgive them if they were distracted by other issues like what to do about slavery, how to protect small states from being dominated by big states, how to balance the powers between the national legislature, the courts and the executive branch, etc.

Our job is to do the best that we can with what they gave us. And, there may not be unanimous agreement about what we should do all the time. I have learned to live in an imperfect world where there are some doubts and uncertainties. We have never elected a President who was without significant roots and attachments to this country. It is not like we have been electing foreign princes as our Chief Executive. Ted Cruz may have been born in Canada, but his biographical connections to America are pretty solid.

Do you know if there was such a statute then?

After repeating myself in these several exchanges of messages, I will inform you once again that there is no statute.

The source of the English common law that asserts those born on the soil are "natural born subjects" stems from Calvin's Case in 1608. This case revolved around peculiar circumstances created by the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

After reading through it, and reading the history surrounding it, it became quite apparent to me that this case was a potentially grave threat to the Union. (Which you ought to be against based on your other posts on the issue of Union. :) )

Had the decision gone the other way, it would have simply blown the Union apart, because the Scots would never have stood for being second class citizens in England.

The Calvin's Case decision was absolutely necessary to turn out as it did to prevent civil war. In other words, King James I, got the decision he absolutely had to have in order to save the union. Even so of the 14 judge panel, there were two dissenters. Lord Coke was the King's chief legal representative in the proceedings.

And this is how English law, which was descended from Roman Law, (note all the Latin gibberish in law) came to deviate significantly from Roman law on the point of how citizenship was acquired at birth.

Calvin's case was a gimmick to keep the peace and consolidate power for King James I.

I really rather suspect that none of them thought it important enough to be more specific.

I think they regarded the concept as so universally understood that none of them thought the meaning was in dispute.

Now I have postulated that some of them believed it to follow the English rule, and others took it to mean the natural law principle as stated by Vattel, and each thinking the other agreed with him, didn't spend much time discussing it.

And let's face it. In 1787, it was pretty d@mned difficult to be born in America to an Alien father that didn't come here to stay. The percentage of overlap between the English Common Law method and the Vattel method was at that time very close to 100%.

I doubt at the time that many of them considered the differences would ever diverge significantly.