When the Constitutional Convention considered the office of the President of the United States, all of the delegates naturally presumed that George Washington would be the only logical choice to fill the position. Because of Washington’s expected election and because of his service as commander-in-chief during the war (especially his retirement from the army at the end of the war), the Convention felt that it could entrust the Presidency with considerable powers, some of which were not well defined.
During the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, nearly everyone agreed that Washington could be trusted. However, figures like Thomas Jefferson and the Antifederalist pamphleteer “Federal Farmer” (widely believed to be Elbridge Gerry) were unsure about his successors. Antifederalist John Lamb, Collector of Customs for New York, worried that “General Slushington might be the next or second President.”
As the Constitutional Convention neared its conclusion, on 31 August 1787, the delegates instructed an ongoing grand committee, representing all eleven states in attendance, to consider the qualifications for the President. Less than a week later, on 4 September, the committee reported a new provision requiring the President to be a “natural born Citizen” or a citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted. On 7 September, just ten days before the Convention ended, the delegates approved the committee’s new clause without objection and without a recorded debate. This limitation was first suggested by John Jay, the Confederation’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who was not a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. How did Jay influence the Convention delegates to add such a limiting clause?
John Jay, formerly president of the Continental Congress in 1779–1780, was one of America’s peace commissioners who signed the peace treaty in 1783. After returning to America in 1784, Congress appointed him Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In this capacity, Jay served for five years as de facto prime minister of the United States, and as such, he was the country’s most experienced diplomat, executive officer, and legislator. However, it was probably Jay’s leadership role in the Confederation that convinced him to decline service in both the Annapolis and the Constitutional conventions.
Jay, as the grandson of French Huguenots forced into exile in the mid-1680s, developed a lifelong dislike and distrust of both Catholics and the French. According to Alexander Hamilton, in a congressional speech on 19 March 1783, despite Jay’s “profound sagacity & pure integrity,” his unsuccessful and unpleasant two-and-a-half-year diplomatic service in Spain as well as his distrust of the motives of the French, Spanish, and English during the peace negotiations, had heightened his natural “suspicious temper.” In April 1783, Jay wrote his close friend, Robert R. Livingston, who was then serving as the Confederation’s first Secretary for Foreign Affairs, that many applications had been submitted for consulships. Jay felt that only Americans “should be employed to serve America.” He had “early entertained this Opinion, & it has been almost daily gathering Strength since my arrival in Europe.”
Jay had been corresponding with George Washington since September 1785 when Washington congratulated Jay on his return to America after his “important services” in Europe and for his appointment as Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In mid-March 1786, Jay responded, imploring Washington to abandon his retirement and assist in revising the Articles of Confederation. The two men discussed the need and difficulties in strengthening the Confederation government. Acknowledging that America was not yet ready to re-establish a monarchy, Jay suggested in a letter dated 7 January 1787 the creation of a bicameral Congress with lifetime appointments for an upper house and annual appointments for a lower house. A “Governor General limited in his Prerogatives and Duration,” who with the advice of a council “of the great judicial Officers,” would “have a Negative on their Acts.” Washington strongly agreed on the necessity of strengthening the Confederation but expressed uncertainty about whether Jay’s proposal was feasible. Two months later, during the Constitutional Convention, Jay on 25 July 1787 wrote to Washington suggesting a “hint,” that foreigners should be prohibited from serving in “the Administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.”
Perhaps Jay feared the election of such popular foreigners as the Marquis de Lafayette or Baron von Steuben.
After Washington received Jay’s letter, he obviously had the “hint” submitted to the grand committee that made its report including the natural-born citizen requirement on 4 September which the delegates approved unanimously three days later.
On 25 July 1788 Jay, one of three Federalist leaders in the New York ratifying Convention, made an unusual out-of-character motion to add an amendment to the lengthy list of amendments proposed by the Convention’s Antifederalists. Jay’s additional amendment provided that only natural-born citizens or those who were naturalized citizens before or after 4 July 1776 or those who held a military commission during the war “and who shall be freeholders” should be eligible to be elected President, Vice-President, or a member of either house of Congress. Jay’s motion was easily approved.
When Washington announced his retirement as President in September 1796, the natural-born citizenship requirement raised concerns about the presidential eligibility of Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette. Both, however, were surely qualified as they held state citizenship at the time the Constitution was ratified. More recently, Barack Obama’s birth in Hawaii was questioned, thus disputing his eligibility to be President. Such rumors were, for most part, dismissed when Obama released his Hawaiian birth certificate in 2008.