“The understanding of Sen. Howard is not determinative of the meaning of the Citizenship Clause, but lets assume it is.”
No, why should it be just because he wrote it and explained in detail what he meant /bonghit
If he was Emperor Howard, you’d be right. But he wasn’t. At the very debate from which that quote is lifted, other Senators had a different view of what the language meant. One, John Conness of California, thought it clearly meant that the children of Chinese immigrants born in the US would be US Citizens, and his vote counted just as much as Howard’s.