Sorry. My bad. I assumed you were perfectly capable of googling it for yourself. However, as I am too lazy and too preoccupied with other more important tasks to help you out, I leave you to your own devices anyway. Enjoy the nirvana.
Peace,
SR
By searching in one of your posts, you said:
...citizenship, natural born or otherwise, was far more than just being born on this soil. Any animal can do that. The grandfather clause would not have been necessary if that were the case.
So you say that if being born on US soil qualifies a person to be a natural born citizen, then the grandfather clause was unnecessary? Is that it?
Do you know WHY the grandfather clause was included?
Strictly speaking, the grandfather clause WAS unnecessary, for almost all of those who might have become President.
But there were a few people who were among our honored early leaders, who were not born on American soil.
These people gave and sacrificed much for the American cause. They poured their lives into it. And those men are why the grandfather clause was added.
It wasn't added for Washington, or Jefferson, or John Adams. All of these had been born on American soil. As James Madison pretty much noted in the debate regarding Smith, such persons were natural born citizens of the communities they were born in. And when we parted with England, their allegiance was FIRST to those communities and SECOND to the distant King and the English government.
In other words, George Washington was born in Virginia, and that alone made him a natural born subject/citizen of Virginia. When Virginia split from England, he stayed a natural born subject/citizen of Virginia. And when the United States was declared, that made him a natural born citizen of the United States.
It was not so with men like James Wilson and Alexander Hamilton, both of whom were important delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Wilson was born in Scotland to Scottish parents, and came to America when he was 24. This was 10 years before the Declaration of Independence. Wilson pushed for Independence.
And you can tell, in some of the discussions at the Constitutional Convention, that he was deeply offended that people like himself, not born in America, should be considered second-class citizens when it came to being considered for positions in the new government.
Also in this boat was Alexander Hamilton, one of the most brilliant young delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and quite possibly the man who pushed the hardest of all for ratification of the new Constitution. And do you know what? Without Hamilton's efforts, the new Constitution might well have failed.
But Hamilton was not born in America. He was born on Nevis, in the British West Indies, and came to America as a young man.
It was for Hamilton and Wilson, and those like them, that the grandfather clause was included. Unfortunately, Hamilton, who might well have taken advantage of that clause to become one of our early Presidents, never really got the chance. He died a young man in a stupid duel with the sitting Vice-President of the United States.
So now you know.