Demonstrably false.
Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen determined Ludwig Hausding, though born in the U.S., was not born a U.S. citizen because he was subject to a foreign power at birth having been born to a Saxon subject alien father.
Similarly, Secretary of State Thomas Bayard determined Richard Greisser, though born in Ohio, was not born a U.S. citizen because Greisser's father, too, was an alien, a German subject at the time of Greisser's birth. Bayard specifically stated that Greisser was at birth 'subject to a foreign power,' therefore not "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
http://books.google.com/books?id=wdgxAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
In the late 1800s (1880s and 1890s) some US Secretaries of State began to increasingly deny citizenship to people who had been born here to alien parents and then left the country, mostly by being carried abroad as children. But as long as they stayed in the country, no one ever pretended they were anything but US citizens.
There were several examples of this, culminating in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was denied reentry to the United States on the supposed grounds that he was not a US citizen.
Wong’s case was decided by the Supreme Court in 1898.
They decided that from the beginning of the country, the same rule had always applied. In fact, they decided that not only was the child born here of non-citizen immigrant parents himself born a citizen, it didn’t even matter whether his parents were themselves legally capable of ever becoming US citizens or not.
It was legally impossible for Wong’s parents ever to become US citizens. But Wong himself, born here, was a natural born US citizen.
And yes, that’s how it ALWAYS was, from the beginning of the country. That some Secretaries of State tried to change the rule, outside of law, in the 1880s and 1890s, doesn’t change what the law itself actually was.