I’m reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton now, and he seems to elide over a point that’s curious to me: born in the West Indies, Hamilton seems never to have taken steps to become a US citizen. I know, he emigrated here to attend college and got caught up in the Revolution, but I’m not sure if he had to do anything more than other colonial after the US declared independence to become a US citizen. Most of the other founders were born on soil that became part of the US, so I guess I understand how they got automatic US citizenship, but how did Hamilton get his? Was there any process back then for immigration and citizenship, or was it was all a vague, undocumented process? If Hamilton had remained in the West Indies, and came to the US in the 1790s, would he have needed a passport? Were there any passports back then? If he had run for president, would anyone have challenged his right to do so? If so, on what basis?
I am prepared to be corrected in principle or in detail on this, but it’s been my clear understanding that prior to passage of the 14th Amendment, you became a U.S. citizen by becoming a citizen of Pennsylvania, or New York, or Massachusetts, or Texas or wherever.
The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, being 78 years after the Naturalization Act of 1790.
My guess is that anyone who was a resident of the US at the time of nationhood automatically became a citizen. (I have no idea whether “nationhood” in this context means the Declaration of Independence, or the adoption of te Constitution, or some other date.)
Well, the Constitution says the president must be a natural born citizen or a citizen of the United States when the Constitution was ratified. So something prior to its adoption must have established citizenship.
There was a series of court cases in both the US and the British courts after the Revolution / Late Unpleasantness with the Colonies that dealt with this issue. Courts in both countries concluded that British subjects who stayed in the US after independence lost their British status and became American citizens; British subjects who left the US (whether for Britain or some other British possession, such as Canada) retained their British status and never became American citizens.
Since Hamilton was a British subject by birth, he wouldn’t have needed any authority to move from the West Indies to the American colonies, all being under the same sovereign at that time. Once he was there, by staying after the Revolution he would have lost his status as a British subject and become an American citizen, by virtue of being a citizen of New York state, as Polycarp suggests.
As for the date, there was a difference on this point between the UK and American court decisions. The British courts took the date of independence from the Treaty of Paris of 1783, as under British law, that was the point at which the colonies legally ceased to be British possessions and became independent. The American courts used the date of July 4, 1776, for obvious reasons.
But surely there were some Tories residing in the US who did not become US citizen and did not renounce their British citizenship. Did Hamilton have to do anything affirmative to become a New York citizen?
No, it wasn’t a question of “not renouncing” - the courts took the view that if you stayed after independence, by operation of law you lost your British status. If you wanted to retain it, you had to leave for British territory.
Citizenship status was sometimes a contentious issue in this period. Swiss-born Albert Gallatin was expelled from the Senate in 1793 over the question of whether he had been a citizen for the required nine years. The rules in his case were different from Hamilton’s, because Gallatin was never a British subject before 1776.
Gallatin, incidentally, later served as Secretary of the Treasury, as had Hamilton before him.
Didn’t quite a few of them leave just after the war was over? You’d think they’d have given them some leeway, wouldn’t you?
Yes, and they did. United Empire Loyalist
The American view might have been that the loyalists had automatically become Americans, but the British view presumably was that they were still British subjects, so when they moved to Canada after the Revolution they would have been accepted without citizenship problems.
(The citizenship laws of different countries are not necessarily the same. For example, for some years I was a “British subject” in Australian law, but not in U.K. law. It would not be surprising if American courts and British courts took different views on the citizenship of American loyalists.)
The citizenship question also came up in regards to the impressment controversy at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, where the British navy refused to accept the naturalization of American citizens of British birth and impressed them anyway.