With all the birther conspiratoring, I was wondering how this was handled early on, with the original few presidents. Now, obviously it HAD to be handled, or we would have had to wait 35 years to actually have a meaningful executive branch. Were all people in the US at the time of ratification automagically made natural citizens? Some other criteria? I’m curious how we handled this, unless it was just a case of “don’t ask questions” and “well… nobody exactly complained.”
Here is the requirement (Article 2, Section something):
“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.”
So everyone who was a citizen at independence was fine. The natural-born requirement didn’t kick in till later.
The Constitution requires that the President either be a natural-born citizen, or have been a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.
Is this not covered in elementary schools any more?
Actually, I just forgot. We did, indeed, learn that in, oh… 5th grade, 8th grade, AP US History, AP US Government… etc. I’m just dumb, nothing to see here, move along.
It required time travel. Pretty sure that was it.
In any case, most leading politicians in the early years of the Republic had been born within the 13 colonies. The major exception was Alexander Hamilton, who was born in the West Indies, but even he would have been a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and thus eligible.
Andrew Jackson had his birthers too. Some people claimed he was born before his parents immigrated here.
That’s total Final Jeopardy bait.