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To: afraidfortherepublic
Forgive me. I've been reading this thread for 4 days and my head is spinning. But, wasn't it the OPPOSITE case? The law was written so that Alexander Hamilton COULD NOT run for President?

1.Birthplace: Nevis, British West Indies


Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

1) Hamilton was a Citizen of the U.S. at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.

2) He was not natural born because he was born in the Caribbean, but he was a Citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. Therefore he would not be excluded from the Presidency, which would happen to all citizens naturalized after the adoption of the Constitution. Note the first part of the Constitution passage I bolded above. It does not require those who met it to be natural born.

3) Since Hamilton arrived in Boston in 1772, he would be in the U.S. over fourteen years. This would meet the second bolded part qualification.

4) He would also have to meet the 35 year qualification, which he would only meet in 1790 or 1792. There is controversy about his year of birth, but even if he was born in 1757 he would 35 by the election of 1792.

5) Of course anyone else who also was a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution would meet that qualification, but Alexander Hamilton was there representing the State of New York himself. I am not aware if anyone else at the Philadelphia Convention was not born in the thirteen colonies. Perhaps someone else will know if there was someone else.

7,128 posted on 08/05/2009 9:55:57 PM PDT by Cheburashka (Stephen Decatur: you want barrels of gunpowder as tribute, you must expect cannonballs with it.)
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To: Cheburashka

I’ve read about this, and there just a handful, if that. Three or four only.


7,140 posted on 08/05/2009 10:04:43 PM PDT by Technical Editor
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To: Cheburashka; altair; El Gato
This just proves that you can never be too old to learn new things! THank you all for the excellent synopsis of the situation regarding Hamilton. Obviously, this was a point of history that I had misunderstood, or had forgotten.

Actually, it is something I probably had never been taught, since at the time I studied American History we were taught that our founding fathers (except for the despicable Burr) did no wrong. ;^)

7,226 posted on 08/06/2009 2:52:07 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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