The authority of States over districts and their inhabitants temporarily subject to its de facto control, will be considered in another chapter. At this place it will be sufficient to quote the opinion in United States v. Rice2 in which, with reference to the status of the port of Castine, Maine, at the time it was in the possession of the British authorities during the War of 1812, the Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Story, said: "By the conquest and military occupation of Castine, the enemy acquired that firm possession which enabled him to exercise the fullest rights of sovereignty over that place. The sovereignty of the United States over the territory was, of course, suspended, and the laws of the United States could no longer be rightfully enforced there, or be obligatory upon the inhabitants who remained and submitted to the conquerors. By the surrender, the inhabitants passed under a temporary allegiance to the British Government, and were bound by such laws, and such only, as it chose to recognize and impose. From the nature of the case, no other laws could be obligatory upon them; for, where there is no protection or allegiance or sovereignty, there can be no claim to obedience."

1 7 Cr. 116; 3 L. ed. 287.

Upon this same point, Chancellor Kent in his Commentaries Bays: "If a portion of the country be taken and held by con-quest in war. the conqueror acquires the rights of the conquered as to its dominion and government, and children born in the armies of a State, while abroad, and occupying a foreign country, are deemed to be born in the allegiance of the sovereign to whom the army belongs. It is equally the doctrine of the English common law that during such hostile occupation of a territory, and the parents adhering to the enemy as subjects de facto, their children, born under such a temporary dominion, are not born under the ligeance of the conquered." And, he adds, there is no reason why the same principles should not apply to the United States.3