At the time the Constitution was written native born and natural born meant the same thing.
Absolutely incorrect! Why in the world would they have written something so redundant....mentioning both terms in one paragraph?
At the time of the signing there were no "Natural Born" Citizens yet. It was a brand new country! But as time went by new folks were being born all the time to parents who were citizens of this new country.....and they were referred to as "Natural Born".
After a long time they were no Citizens left alive who had been alive at the signing of the Constitution and that's when the grandfather clause took effect. At that point....only Natural Born Citizens could seek the Presidency. Anyone born in the country (Native Citizens) to non-citizen parents were eliminated from consideration.
Yes they did, but "native" means something different today. It nowadays simply means "born here", but in 1787 it meant born here to people who are supposed to be here. It was not applied to the children of transient aliens.
In the 1790s, transportation to and from Europe was hard. The Fastest it could be done was 1 month, but it often took as long as two. (It was faster going west than it was going East.)
People didn't generally come here for frivolous reasons, they came here to stay permanently, to settle. Within those demographic constraints, being born here was pretty much a given that you would be born to citizen parents or people who intend to be citizens.
The Exceptions were simply too rare as to deserve note, and therefore no one made much effort to distinguish one from the other. They were, in effect, the same thing.
The Ease of Modern Transportation has left our laws in need of catching up. Anchor Babies and Birth Tourism are now taking full advantage of an oversight in clarification of what is meant by "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
Even George Will and Ann Coulter have pointed out that the 14th amendment doesn't mean what people think.