"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." (emphasis added)
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
Question: who are the foreign-born citizens who might plausibly be elected president thanks to the clause I have emphasized?
(1) The first name that will occur to everyone is Alexander Hamilton. There are of course problems, even if he avoids the affair with Mrs. Reynolds, but see
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/1ykwL5xtO1Q/FRxc3ykeOZsJ for one scenario.
(2) Albert Gallatin--he was actually a vice-presidential candidate in 1824, but dropped out for lack of popular support.
(3) Yet *another* foreign-born Secretary of the Treasury--Alexander J. Dallas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_J._Dallas_(statesman)
Let's say that he's in better health and doesn't die in 1817. Maybe in 1816 those Democratic-Republicans who want to break the Virginia Dynasty rally around him.
(4) James McHenry--Irish-born Secretary of War under Washngton and Adams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McHenry The obvious problem, as with Hamilton, is that people aren't likely to elect a Federalist after 1800.
(5) William Patterson--Governor, Senator, and Supreme Court Justice; like McHenry, born in County Antrim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Paterson_(judge) Once again there's the problem that it's hard to elect a Federalist after Adams...
(6) Pierce Butler--also Irish-born. A South Carolinian.
"Butler displayed inconsistencies that troubled his associates. He favored ratification of the Constitution, yet did not attend the South Carolina convention that ratified it. Later, he was elected by the South Carolina state legislature to three separate terms in the United States Senate, but changed his party allegiance: beginning as a Federalist, he switched to the Jeffersonian party in 1795. In 1804 he declared himself a political independent.[1]
"Vice President Aaron Burr was Butler's guest at his St. Simons plantations in September 1804. Burr was, at the time, laying low after shooting Alexander Hamilton in the July 1804 duel. The states of New York and New Jersey had each indicted the Vice President for murder in the wake of the post-duel controversy. Burr had traveled during August,to Butler's plantation under the pseudonym Roswell King, which was Butler's overseer's name. During Burr's stay in early September, one of the worst hurricanes
in history hit the area, and we have Burr's first-hand description, documenting both his stay and this event.[4] It is interesting to note that Butler's politics and public involvement mirror the political rise
and fall of his friend Burr..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_Butler
All in all, not a likely prospect.
Basically, the problem is that a number of the foreign-born were Federalists--a party that had little chance of winning the White House after 1800; and the rest were Democratic-Republicans--but for a long time, to be a plausible Democratic-Republican presidential candidate, you had to be born not just in the US but in Virginia...
But I am sure there are some names I have neglected. (After all, a foreign-born person who came to America as an infant in the 1780's could still be a plausible presidential candidate in the 1840's...) Can anybody here think of one?