vides
(Art. 2, Sec. 1) that "no person except a natural born citizen,
or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of
the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,"
and (Art. 1, Sec. 8) that Congress shall have power "to establish
a uniform rule of naturalization." Thus, new citizens may be born
or they may be created by naturalization.

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born
citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At
common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the
Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all
children born in a country of parents who were its citizens
became themselves upon their birth citizens also. These were
natives, or natural-born citizens as distinguished from aliens or
foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens
children born within the jurisdiction, without reference to the
citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been
doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case
it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for
everything we have now to consider, that all children born of
citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.
The words "all children" are certainly as comprehensive when used
in this connection as "all persons," and if females are included
in the last, they must be in the first. That they are included in
the last is not denied. In fact, the whole argument of the
plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.

Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization,
Congress as early as 1790 provided "that any alien, being a free
white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United
States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized,
dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years
of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be
considered citizens of the United States, and that the children
of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the
sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be
considered as natural-born citizens (1 Stat. 103). These
provisions thus enacted have, in substance, been retained in all
the naturalization laws adopted since. In 1855, how