Tag Archives: Wisconsin

Questions for Mario Apuzzo (6)

by Dr. Conspiracy on 04. Oct, 2009 in Citizenship, Mario Apuzzo

Dred Scott

Dred Scott

Here’s a natural born thought experiment. Consider two hypothetical persons, both born on January 1, 1799 in Charleston, South Carolina.

Ezekiel Crowe was born a slave and the son of slaves. Both he and his Charleston-born parents were owned by John Rutledge, a Framer of the Constitution of the United States. Young Crowe was raised listening to anecdotes about the great Mr. Rutledge. Mr. Crowe was freed from slavery by the proclamation of Abraham Lincoln in 1863 when he was 64 years old.  He served in the reconstruction legislature in South Carolina, and received a law degree from the University of South Carolina.

Otto Shicklegruber was born the son of German immigrants who arrived from Germany in 1793 and had become naturalized US Citizens. Otto’s father died of yellow fever before Otto was born and his mother died in childbirth. Because both of his parents were dead, the newborn Shicklegruber  was sent back to Germany to live with grandparents. In 1857  he returned to the United States and established residence in a German speaking community in Wisconsin (Shicklegruber did not speak any English), where he lived as a loan shark.

Questions:

  1. Which of the two were natural born citizens of the United States on April 15, 1856? (Before the Dred Scott decision)
  2. Which of the two were natural born citizens of the United States on April 15, 1862? (After Dred Scott, but before the Emancipation Proclamation))
  3. Which of the two were natural born citizens of the United States on April 15, 1865? (After the Emancipation Proclamation, but before the 14th Amendment
  4. Which of the two were natural born citizens of the United States on April 15, 1870? (After the 14th Amendment)
  5. Which of the two were eligible to run against President Grant in 1872? (after Shicklegruber had lived in the US for 14 years)
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Madison v. Madison (Updated)

by Dr. Conspiracy on 25. May, 2009 in Citizenship, Featured Articles

“Constitutional researcher” P. A. Madison plays fast and loose with his sources.

The two “Madisons” are contemporary self-identified “constitutional researcher” P. A. Madison, author of an article on the Federalist Blog that is the topic for discussion here, and James Madison, framer of the Constitution, Congressman and 4th President of the United States.

This web site recently featured President James Madison in the article James Madison on Birth and Allegiance.

In a speech before the House of Representatives in May of 1789, James Madison said:

It is an established maxim, that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth, however, derives its force sometimes from place, and sometimes from parentage; but, in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.

Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856 From Gales and Seatons’ Annals of Congress; from Their Register of Debates; and from the Official Reported Debates, by John C. Rives By United States. Congress, Thomas Hart Benton

P. A. Madison, on the other hand asserts the opposite, that place of birth alone does not and cannot grant citizenship in his article, Defining Natural-Born Citizen. We know P. A. Madison from an earlier article challenging the citizenship of children born in the United States to illegal aliens, something true today under the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. P. A. Madison disagrees with that decision and presents an alternate view of history (from the legal and judicial survey in the Wong decision) in which parentage matters. (more…)

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