Wiki page about James Iredell: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Iredell
Wiki page about Samuel Johnston: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnston
Here is the key, when the Constitution was written, it said that anyone that was here when the Constitution was written is eligible. Basically if you busted your butt to help us win the war, you can be President.
I don’t have the exact wording, but that is the gist of it. I’m tired, but wanted to reply before I went to sleep.
Ping
Thanks for your research.
Both “citizens at the time of adoption”
You haven’t helped Cruz.
A few years ago when researching Sen.Obama, I came across a footnote that piqued my interest: it stated that the U.S.Senate had the power to eject from their body any Senator who was deemed ineligible. It mentioned that during the 19th century two Senators, neither of whom were U.S. citizens, experienced just that. Their names were struck from the records as never having existed.
One of the gentlemen involved became a U.S. citizen, waited for the required number of years and was again chosen by his state to be a Senator in Congress.
Senator Cruz should do something to repair his U.S. citizenship, or he just might find himself without any country at all and Texas may not have a say in it.
In 1796, no one who was old enough to be president had been born in the US, because the US didn’t exist at the time of their birth.
You might consider researching the Constitution of the United States one of these days.
If they resided here at time of Constitution ratification they became citizens like anyone else at that time....who qualified
The person elected President that year (John Adams) wasn’t born in the US either.
But if you actually read the Constiution you would see that it allowed for that to happen.
Nobody who ran before 1824 could have been born a citizen of the United States.
Oh, well the, that will change everyone’s mind. Thanks for posting.
Of course, the constitution explicitly states they were eligible in 1796.
So, you prove nothing.
Thanks for playing.
//All sarc.
You don’t need to go back so far, McCain was born in Panama.
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.
Yes, people who were citizens at the time of the founding, even thought “foreign born,” were eligible. In addition to the two persons who received electoral votes in that election, this included Alexander Hamilton (born in the British West Indies, but a citizen at the time of the Founding). Sometimes, I hear people assert that Hamilton wasn’t qualified, but he was.
Another person whose qualification was at one time controversial was Vice President Charles Curtis. Curtis was born on an Indian reservation (his mother was a member of an Indian tribe) in Kansas Territory, back in 1860. At the time, the status of Indians on reservations was, well, controversial. At a later time, the Supreme Court ruled that Indians on reservations were citizens of the United States (because the tribal nations were sufficiently subordinated to the U.S.). Under the theory that natural born means citizen at birth, he was natural born because at least one of his parents (his father) was a citizen regardless of his place of birth.
They were citizens when the Constitution was enacted, therefore they were eligible. There were no natural born citizens until the Constitution was in force. Even those born in Virginia or Massachusetts were born in England, prior to the existence of this country.
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.
Apparently they don't have you read the Constitution for civics any more.
Because of the grandfather clause. And no one born before the establishment of the United States of America was born in the USA. ‘Cause it didn’t exist.