Actually, not a founding document. A law made after the founding.
And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.
Don't confuse the plural "citizens" to mean both parents, like the birthers claim. It is simply a multiple to collectively include the citizen parent (father) of any citizen child and all citizen children. There never was a two-citizen-parent requirement. Once women were no longer second class citizens, the requirement that citizenship pass through the father became obsolete. It didn't fully go away until after Obama's birth, however, thus the importance of where he actually was born.
Clearly the Founders considered that some citizens would spend significant time out of the country - we were, after all, a maritime nation and a frontier nation at the same time. They also considered that children would be born to those citizens and themselves spend substantial time out of the country. Thus the requirement of only 14 years of residency, with no mention of place of birth, only status at birth, to wit: citizen at birth - the specifics of which are delegated to Congress in the Constitution, which is a founding document. Fourteen years represents only 40% of the minimum age requirement. And that assumes someone could manage to get elected at 35. For someone the age of Donald Trump that requirement is only 20% of their age.
Birthers make a lot of claims based on wishes and hopes and not much else. A little logic goes a long way to sorting out the truth. Citizen at birth, 35 years old and 14 years a resident. That's it.
I hate when people quote the 1790 Act. That act is one of the few that was formally repealed because it contained mistakes. That was 5 years later & it was repealed so that it could not form any basis to set precedent.
http://www.indiana.edu/~kdhist/H105-documents-web/week08/naturalization1790.html
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform rule of Naturalization; and to repeal the act heretofore passed on that subject” (January 29, 1795).
The Act is contained in its entiret at the above link.
“Don’t confuse the plural “citizens” to mean both parents, like the birthers claim.”
My American history professors in college in the 70s were not birthers (a snarky term cooked up by Obama supporters when it got hot over his birth). They said that natural born required two citizens parents. Also, throughout our history, that was taught. Just ask anyone who went to school when American history was taught.
Just because it is not defined in the Constitution is laughable. There are plenty of legal terms in the Constitution that are not defined. “Natural born” is a legal term used at that time. Frozen into the Constitution. Cannot be taken out by any acts of Congress.
There is a particular Freeper on site who has listed all the Supreme Court decisions that stipulate that natural born refers to two citizen parents.
It can be reasonably argued that Congress realized that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress is given the power to make uniform laws on naturalization and that this power did not include the power to decide who is included or excluded from being a presidential Article II "natural born Citizen." While Congress has passed throughout United States history many statutes declaring who shall be considered nationals and citizens of the United States at birth and thereby exempting such persons from having to be naturalized under naturalization laws, at no time except by way of the short-lived "natural born" phrase in Naturalization Act of 1790 did it ever declare these persons to be "natural born Citizens."
The uniform definition of "natural born Citizen" was already provided by the law of nations and was already settled. The Framers therefore saw no need nor did they give Congress the power to tinker with that definition. Believing that Congress was highly vulnerable to foreign influence and intrigue, the Framers, who wanted to keep such influence out of the presidency, did not trust Congress when it came to who would be President, and would not have given Congress the power to decide who shall be President by allowing it to define what an Article II "natural born Citizen " is.
Additionally, the 1790 act was a naturalization act. How could a naturalization act make anyone an Article II "natural born Citizen?" After all, a "natural born Citizen" was made by nature at the time of birth and could not be so made by any law of man.