The southern states were forced to ratify it as conditions of their surrendor and readmittance.
I wouldn't say any law made at the end of the barrel of a gun is legit.
I agree.
And delving into the murky waters of speculative legal history, after consulting several old volumes of law online - btw you can read blackstone for free through google books, I believe the following is true:
Jus Sanguinis goes back to the Romans, which is why most of Europe uses it. England also has it, explicitly if both parents are citizens, or if the father is. England also has Jus Soli, with the idea if you were on the kings soil, you owed him allegiance, you were his property. Jus Soli was added later.
Although the 14th amendment is Jus Soli and came later, our interpretation idea seems to come from that. I am not so sure that the founders in the original didn't really mean it as natural born instead of "native born" if talking by land.
Why? First, Jus Soli is an English idea apart from most of europe that really ties people back to the idea of being owned by the state or sort of as property. But at the end of the revolution the people were sovereigns, and it seems that their inheritance should then be acting like that of kings, or by blood inheritance. Furthermore, the constitution was by the people, not the other way around, presuming they created the borders already as a people - and people generally are by blood inheritance not as servants on land. Second, it is implied in the preamble of the Constitution itself, as the concept of posterity is like Jus Sanguinis.
So following the concept of individual sovereignty, I'm not sure you would want citizenship to flow from Jus Soli, as Jus Soli implies vassalage to a king or state, instead of the sovereignty of the people creating the state.
Edit: Regardless, since neither both parents or his father alone is a citizen, I don't think Obama qualifies as a natural born citizen under Jus Sanguinis under common law from what I've read. That leaves where he was born as a possible issue.
