I was wrong! Hamilton edition

[beatrice_otter]

I love Hamilton, but there's one thing that annoyed me: the repeated statement that, after the Reynolds pamphlet, Hamilton was "never goin' be President now."

Because, as Hamilton points out A LOT, Hamilton was an immigrant. And immigrants can't be President! You have to be a natural-born citizen!* It says so right in the constitution!

But then I decided to double-check, and there was a curlicue I didn't know about (because it hasn't applied in 200 years). Clause Five of Article Two reads:

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; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

And there it goes. Hamilton was an immigrant, but he was a citizen of the United States when the Constitution was adopted, so he would indeed have been eligible to be president if he hadn't been such an idiot.

*Which is why the "birther" idiots kept trying to "prove" that Obama's birth certificate was fake, and he was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii, and thus not a US Citizen--which is stupid because even if it were true, Obama would still be a natural-born citizen because his mother was a citizen.

Comments

[schneefink]

I knew that immigrants can't become President now, but I thought that was a rule that was added later. I liked to imagine that it was a rule Jefferson or Adams added just to spite Hamilton ^^

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah, that's why I checked it out before posting a great big HAMILTON COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN PRESIDENT, HE'S AN IMMIGRANT post.

But, nope, there was an exception from the beginning, for people who had come to the US and made it their new home and (presumably) fought for its independence.

[muccamukk]

Martin Van Buren was actually the first president born in the US when it was the US. He's not remembered for much else?

IDK, my US history is spotty.

ETA: Apparently forced the Seminole off their land and re-entrenched slavery. A winner!

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah, but I thought the whole "natural born citizen" thing would mean that you had to have been a natural born citizen of one of the colonies, for that first generation and a half of presidents. But I was wrong!

My US history is pretty good--I have a degree in history!--but it's mostly social history, not political history.

[lilacsigil]

I knew this because I once wondered (during all the "birther" nonsense) when that rule had been brought in, because the first few Presidents could not, logically, have been born citizens of the United States because there was no United States when they were born.

[beatrice_otter]

I always thought that for that first generation, they meant "had been a natural born citizen of one of the 13 colonies"

[melannen]

I knew this because there's a Highlander fanfic where it's relevant that if you fought in the American Revolution, you count as a natural-born citizen for all legal purposes, even if you were actually born, say, four hundred years ago in the Highlands of Scotland.

(fandom is educational!)

[beatrice_otter]

Link? Because that sounds awesome.

I, personally, have thought of citizenship ficcishly in a Star Trek context. Remember that Enterprise episode about the Vulans stranded on Earth in the 1950s, and one of them choosing to stay behind permanently? I have quite a lot of plot bunnies about What Happened After, including him having kids (we'll handwave the science of producing hybrid children from parents with such vastly different biochemistries, physiologies, and genetics), and things coming to light after First Contact and things being ... legally complex.

[melannen]

It was a very minor bit in one of the epic-length Stargate crossovers, IIRC (and it wasn't about running for president, sadly, it was about security clearances.)

I don't think I ever saw that Enterprise episode but I did spend a lot of time thinking about it as regards the TOS novel where there were some Vulcans stranded on Earth in the early 21st century... (Especially since, IIRC, Spock gave them contact info for some of his ancestors before he went back to the future.)

[beatrice_otter]

Strangers from the Sky? I don't remember the contact info bit, but it's been years since I read it.