You are just proving my point. We are engaging in speculation, not settled law. I am sure you believe that John McCain was not a natural born citizen. I believe he is.
If you automatically become a citizen of this country by blood or place of birth and don't have to be naturalized, you are natural born IMO. The term "natural born citizen" is not used anywhere else in the Constitution, and it has never been the subject of any federal court ruling. Hence, its exact meaning could be subject to controversy.
I think that the opinion of Justice Joseph Story, speaking of a majority, is more than speculation. All of the opinions I have referred to are from those who knew the framers well and had spoken to them extensively. There is no definition section in the Constitution. It is the intent of those who wrote and adopted it that matters. None of them had a contrary opinion to those that I have cited. The opinions that I have cited have been reinforced by others. For example, Chief Justice Waite in
Minor v. Happersett. Such legal authority and case law is not "speculation." We do not cite "speculation" in legal briefs, we cite authority. It is you who are speculating, and doing so in contradiction of known and ascertainable authority. Can you cite a single case or respected authority that says that the Article II phrase does not mean what Vattel said? I know of one case by an Indiana state court that is based on the speculation that the Framers were familiar with the common law and therefore adopted the phrase from it, in direct contradiction of Story, Marshall, Tucker, Ramsay and even George Mason who said that the English common law was not American common law. Indeed there is legal authority that the common law on point is not such that it would make Soetoro a/k/a Obama a legally eligible person to be President.
Tell me, if you would be so kind, what is speculative about the Story opinion in Shanks v. Dupont.