ing _et al. v._ Page, 9 How. 614.)

_The United States can have a valid title by conquest to territory
not a part of the Union._

"By the laws and usages of nations, conquest is a valid title.... As
regarded by all other nations it [Tampico] was a part of the United
States, and belonged to them as exclusively as a Territory included in
our established boundaries, but yet it was not a part of the Union."
(United States Supreme Court, Fleming _et al. v._ Page, 9 How.
603-615.)

_A title so acquired by the United States cannot be questioned in its
courts._

"If those departments which are intrusted with the foreign intercourse
of the Nation ... have unequivocally asserted its rights of dominion
over a country of which it is in possession and which it claims under a
treaty, if the legislature has acted on the construction thus asserted,
it is not in its own courts that this construction is to be denied. A
question like this, respecting the boundaries of a nation, is ... more
a political than a legal question, and in its discussion the courts of
every country must respect the pronounced will of the legislature."
(Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, Foster _et al. v._ Neilson, 2 Peters 253,
309.)

_Yet such territory may be still outside the United States_ (meaning
thereby the American Union organized by the Constitution--the Nation),
_and cannot get in without action by the political authorities_.

"The boundaries of the United States, as they existed when war was
declared against Mexico, were not extended by the conquest.... They
remained unchanged. And every place which was out of the limits of the
United States, as previously established by the political authorities
of the Government, was still foreign." (Fleming _et al. v._ Page, 9
How. 616.)

_The United States can govern such territory as it pleases. Thus it
can withhold any power of local legislation._

"Possessing the power to erect a Territorial government for Alaska,
they could confer upon it such powers, judicial and executive, as they
deemed most suitable to the necessities of the inhabitants. It was
unquestionably within the constitutional power of Congress to withhold
from the inhabitants of Alaska the power to legislate and make laws. In
the absence, then, of any law-making power in the Territory, to what
source must the people look for the laws by which they are to be
governed? This question can admit of but one answer. Congress is the
only law-mak