James Madison, Fourth President of the United States, 1809-1817
Barack Hussein Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States and thus is ineligible to be President of the United States.
It is important to distinguish between being born a citizen of the United States and being born a natural born citizen of the United States. Only those persons who are born on the soil of the United States of two parents, BOTH OF WHOM WERE CITIZENS OF THE U.S. AT THE TIME OF THE BIRTH, are citizens of the United States within the meaning of Article Two, Section One of the United States Constitution that specifies the necessary qualification for becoming President.
By act of Congress late in 19th Century any person born on the soil of the United States is a citizen of the United States regardless of the nationality of the child's parents, but that child is not a natural born citizen if both parents were not themselves citizens at the time of the birth.
Some have argued that according to British Common Law those persons born on the soil of the United States of parents who themselves were not citizens of the United States were citizens even though Congress in the 1802 Naturalization Act specifically denied the applicability of British Common law in the matter of citizenship in the United States.
Leo Donofrio, posted the article below on his blog Natural Born Citizen showing that Publius (who was probably President James Madison) strongly stated British Common Law did not apply in a case involving James McClure.
- Leo Rugiens
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THE PUBLIUS ENIGMA: Newly Revealed Evidence Establishes That President James Madison’s Administration Required Citizen Parentage To Qualify Native-Born Persons For U.S. Citizenship.
by Leo Donofrio
naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com
I was recently forwarded an incredibly amazing article from the October 10, 1811 edition of The Alexandria Herald newspaper. RXSID of Free Republic sent it with a brief note, stating, “Check out this case.” The Herald article is entitled, Case of James McClure. The author is…PUBLIUS.
Publius was the pseudonym used by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, for their anonymous authorship of The Federalist Papers. By 1811, Hamilton was dead and Jay retired. My research leads me to believe that the article was written by James Madison, but this has not been conclusively established yet. Regardless of authorship, Madison was President at the time the article was written, and it discusses the official position of his administration denying U.S. citizenship based upon simple birth in the country.
The official position of the Madison administration was that persons born in the U.S. to alien parents were not U.S. citizens. This was the ruling concerning James McClure, despite the fact that his parents had been settled in the country for many years prior to his birth. The article makes clear that the United States Minister to France, General Armstrong, refused diplomatic protection for McClure by denying he was a citizen of the United States.
This was the official decision despite McClure having been born in South Carolina in 1785 to a father who was naturalized months later in 1786. Armstrong informed the French authorities that the man was not a U.S. citizen, and McClure was left in French custody. The article by PUBLIUS indicates that Armstrong might have mis-applied the 1802 Naturalization Act, but PUBLIUS also makes clear that McClure was not a citizen by virtue of his native birth in South Carolina:
There was no statute in South Carolina in 1785 which granted citizenship to persons born there similar to Virginia’s statute mentioned in the article by PUBLIUS. Simply being a “son of the soil” was not enough, and this evidence repudiates the contention that the British common law had been adapted in all of the states after the revolution. Since there was no statute in place making those born in South Carolina citizens, McClure was not held to be a native-born citizen. That argument was utterly rejected throughout the affair.
The article goes on to question whether the 1802 act is defective in that PUBLIUS seems to believe citizenship ought to be revoked for naturalized persons who return to their original country and establish domicile there again. But the article makes clear that Madison’s administration steadfastly denied that simple birth in the United States was enough to establish citizenship. This, of course, discredits the conclusions of Justice Horace Gray in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, as well as the infamous New York Chancery opinion of Lynch v. Clark. Both cases contain erroneous assumptions that the British common law rule of jus soli governed citizenship from the very genesis of the United States.
I tracked down the original article published in the Richmond Enquirer on October 1, 1811, which was then republished in The Alexandria Herald on October 10, 1811. Both of these newspapers were published in Virginia, Madison’s home state. Furthermore, the PUBLIUS penned article was the grand finale of nearly a year-long argument which went viral in various newspapers of the day starting in January 1811.
I have been up and down the East Coast tracking down the remaining newspaper articles on this as well as other supporting historical information. I have also consulted with professionals and am preparing an extensive section for my forthcoming book which details everything that has been unearthed.
The whole story cannot be understood by way of online searches. The internet is barren on this case. Some of the necessary information isn’t even available in the Library of Congress or National Archives.
Here are the images from the Alexandria Herald and Richmond Enquirer. The Herald scan is much easier to read than the Enquirer scan.
Leo Donofrio, Esq.
[See commenting rules here.]
Publius was the pseudonym used by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, for their anonymous authorship of The Federalist Papers. By 1811, Hamilton was dead and Jay retired. My research leads me to believe that the article was written by James Madison, but this has not been conclusively established yet. Regardless of authorship, Madison was President at the time the article was written, and it discusses the official position of his administration denying U.S. citizenship based upon simple birth in the country.
The official position of the Madison administration was that persons born in the U.S. to alien parents were not U.S. citizens. This was the ruling concerning James McClure, despite the fact that his parents had been settled in the country for many years prior to his birth. The article makes clear that the United States Minister to France, General Armstrong, refused diplomatic protection for McClure by denying he was a citizen of the United States.
This was the official decision despite McClure having been born in South Carolina in 1785 to a father who was naturalized months later in 1786. Armstrong informed the French authorities that the man was not a U.S. citizen, and McClure was left in French custody. The article by PUBLIUS indicates that Armstrong might have mis-applied the 1802 Naturalization Act, but PUBLIUS also makes clear that McClure was not a citizen by virtue of his native birth in South Carolina:
There was no statute in South Carolina in 1785 which granted citizenship to persons born there similar to Virginia’s statute mentioned in the article by PUBLIUS. Simply being a “son of the soil” was not enough, and this evidence repudiates the contention that the British common law had been adapted in all of the states after the revolution. Since there was no statute in place making those born in South Carolina citizens, McClure was not held to be a native-born citizen. That argument was utterly rejected throughout the affair.
The article goes on to question whether the 1802 act is defective in that PUBLIUS seems to believe citizenship ought to be revoked for naturalized persons who return to their original country and establish domicile there again. But the article makes clear that Madison’s administration steadfastly denied that simple birth in the United States was enough to establish citizenship. This, of course, discredits the conclusions of Justice Horace Gray in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, as well as the infamous New York Chancery opinion of Lynch v. Clark. Both cases contain erroneous assumptions that the British common law rule of jus soli governed citizenship from the very genesis of the United States.
I tracked down the original article published in the Richmond Enquirer on October 1, 1811, which was then republished in The Alexandria Herald on October 10, 1811. Both of these newspapers were published in Virginia, Madison’s home state. Furthermore, the PUBLIUS penned article was the grand finale of nearly a year-long argument which went viral in various newspapers of the day starting in January 1811.
I have been up and down the East Coast tracking down the remaining newspaper articles on this as well as other supporting historical information. I have also consulted with professionals and am preparing an extensive section for my forthcoming book which details everything that has been unearthed.
The whole story cannot be understood by way of online searches. The internet is barren on this case. Some of the necessary information isn’t even available in the Library of Congress or National Archives.
Here are the images from the Alexandria Herald and Richmond Enquirer. The Herald scan is much easier to read than the Enquirer scan.
Leo Donofrio, Esq.
[See commenting rules here.]
2 bloggers like this post.
December 29, 2011 at 10:01 AM
nice [nahys] Show IPA
adjective, nic·er, nic·est.
1.
pleasing; agreeable; delightful: a nice visit.
2.
amiably pleasant; kind: They are always nice to strangers.
3.
characterized by, showing, or requiring great accuracy, precision, skill, tact, care, or delicacy: nice workmanship; a nice shot; a nice handling of a crisis.
4.
showing or indicating very small differences; minutely accurate, as instruments: a job that requires nice measurements.
5.
minute, fine, or subtle: a nice distinction.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nice
December 29, 2011 at 11:03 AM
There was no general rule in this country for Jus Soli citizenship. Gray was full of crap, but he was really smart at dishing out crap. He was a genius at obfuscating the truth of the law, but history will now correct the lie.
Don’t forget, it was the US Government which denied Wong Kim Ark to be a citizen. But I guess the Executive Branch was occupied by a bunch of birthers in 1898. The Attorney General just didn’t like Obama, who he must have seen in a prophetic vision. Damn birthers.
Damn facts. James McClure was not a US citizen by birth on the soil. The Madison administration required his father to be naturalized before he was born for him to have been considered a citizen at birth. James McClure was NOT eligible to be POTUS. The article makes clear that months after McClure was born, he might have been entitled to citizenship via derivative naturalization, but he certainly was not a citizen at the time of his birth, and therefore was not natural born. His birth in the US did not make him a US citizen at all, let alone natural-born. The case of James McClure speaks volumes to the original meaning of Article 2 Section 1.
More to come on James McClure et al.
Leo