You're welcome. I consider that background to be one of the more important things I discovered relating to this issue.
However, I would disagree with the reason why the framers scuttled "subject" in favor of "citizen". The term "subject" inferred subordination to the state, while the framers considered the individual to be "sovereign".
So you are thinking they would keep the English law principle of creating a "subject" but call just call it something else?
I am arguing that they adopted the usage of the word "Citizen" because they got this usage of the word from what Vattel had written in his "Law of Nations" instruction manual for creating a Republic. That book of his landed in the Colonies like a hand grenade. Indeed, it appears to be responsible for the very earliest stirrings of revolution. James Otis cites it in his "The Rights of the Colonists asserted and proved" pamphlets. Vattel's book as much as says that the United States should be formed.
"Finally, several sovereign and independent states may unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy, without ceasing to be, each individually, a perfect state. They will together constitute a federal republic: their joint deliberations will not impair the sovereignty of each member, though they may, in certain respects, put some restraint on the exercise of it, in virtue of voluntary engagements. A person does not cease to be free and independent, when he is obliged to fulfil engagements which he has voluntarily contracted."
At this time in history, there is no other philosopher of natural law suggesting such a thing. As all the nations in the world save Switzerland were Monarchies, asserting that people should form a "Federal Republic" would have been tantamount to treason. The Kings of Europe would not have looked kindly upon such agitation for the overthrow of their rule.
Switzerland was the only nation in which such a thing could be voiced, because it had overthrown it's monarchy 400 years earlier.
Otherwise, I'd contend that the 1790 & 1795 laws regarding citizenship clearly indicate that the framers (who were part of the legislature at the time) wanted every benefit of citizenship conveyed to children born abroad of an American citizen father -- including eligibility for the presidency.
They do not make that clear at all. In fact, the 1790 and 1795 laws make it clear that prior to these laws, foreign birth (with an American father) automatically precluded citizenship, and they further make it clear that having a foreign father also precludes citizenship. Whether they intended this law to affect Presidential eligibility is not clear one way or the other. Being a "citizen" is not necessarily the same thing as being a "natural" citizen.
Such citizenship was an accepted part of British common law because Britain's far-flung commercial interests required British subjects to be far-flung across the globe themselves. A child was no less British because he was born in India of a British father and a maharani.
Yes, but statutory law was created to address this issue. English common law made these people aliens until statutory law was created to change this condition.
It was not until 1932, as I recall, that the U.S. parental citizenship requirement was modernized to make the mother the co-equal of the father -- but the requirement remained one citizen parent.
It was the "Cable Act" of 1922 that initially allowed women to pass on citizenship, and it was the Women's citizenship act of 1934 that expanded it into roughly what we have today.
But such acts cannot amend constitutional law. To change constitutional law, it requires an amendment, not a redefinition of the word "citizen" based on Congress's power of naturalization.
In 1787, a "natural born citizen" had to have an American father, and the mother's citizenship status was immaterial to the point.
Right. Call it something else because a "sovereign individual" was anything but a "subject".
I am arguing that they adopted the usage of the word "Citizen" because they got this usage of the word from what Vattel had written in his "Law of Nations" instruction manual for creating a Republic.
I get that. But disagree with you. There is no reason to believe they borrowed this usage from Vattel because it's not apparent they borrowed anything else.