[Political Junkie Too]

Interesting reads. Even though the term "natural born" was used in the context of a peace treaty, it is additional evidence of what the common understanding of the phrase was in the late eighteenth century.

Thanks.

-PJ

[one guy in new jersey]

It’s use in a draft of a peace treaty exchanged between ministers Plenipotentiary of two separate sovereign countries would also tend to suggest that the term “natural born citizen” did not partake of any substantial degree of murkiness, at least in the minds of, say, John Adams, John Jay, or Ben Franklin.

Four years later, John Jay makes his famous “hint” to George Washington. Would John Jay dare to do this (i.e., suggest that the command in Chief of the Army devolve on none but a natural born citizen) if either John Jay or George Washington didn’t know exactly what it was that Jay was suggesting that Washington do in terms of erecting a “strong check” against foreigners gaining ascendancy in our armed forces?

Given all this, it absolutely MUST have been the case that exactly NONE of the founding fathers or the framers of the U.S. Constitution was IN ANY WAY HAZY by 1787-88 about:

1) the specific meaning of the term “natural born citizen”,

2) precisely who was and who was not a natural born citizen of the United States under the then-operative Articles of Confederation, or

3) who would and who would not be a natural born citizen of the United States in the future in the event the proposed new Constitution were to be adopted.