must be
considered, before a legal conclusion can be reached, that his place
of residence is not his domicil. If a military officer stationed at a
particular post should entertain an expectation that his residence
there would be indefinitely protracted, and in consequence should
remove his family to the place where his duties were to be discharged,
form a permanent domestic establishment there, exercise there the
civil rights and discharge the civil duties of an inhabitant, while he
did no act and manifested no intent to have a domicil elsewhere, I
think no one would say that the mere fact that he was himself liable
to be called away by the orders of the Government would prevent his
acquisition of a technical domicil at the place of the residence of
himself and his family. In other words, I do not think a military
officer incapable of acquiring a domicil. (Bruce _v._ Bruce, 2 Bos.
and Pul., 230; Munroe _v._ Douglass, 5 Mad. Ch. R., 232.) This being
so, this case stands thus: there was evidence before the jury that
Emerson resided about two years at Fort Snelling, in the Territory of
Wisconsin. This may or may not have been with such intent as to make
it his technical domicil. The presumption is that it was. It is so
laid down by this court, in Ennis _v._ Smith, (14 How.,) and the
authorities in support of the position are there referred to. His
intent was a question of fact for the jury. (Fitchburg _v._
Winchendon, 4 Cush., 190.)

The case was taken from the jury. If they had power to find that the
presumption of the necessary intent had not been rebutted, we cannot
say, on this record, that Emerson had not his technical domicil at
Fort Snelling. But, for reasons which I shall now proceed to give, I
do not deem it necessary in this case to determine the question of the
technical domicil of Dr. Emerson.

It must be admitted that the inquiry whether the law of a particular
country has rightfully fixed the _status_ of a person, so that in
accordance with the principles of international law that _status_
should be recognised in other jurisdictions, ordinarily depends on the
question whether the person was domiciled in the country whose laws
are asserted to have fixed his _status_. But, in the United States,
questions of this kind may arise, where an attempt to decide solely
with reference to technical domicil, tested by the rules which are
applicable to changes of places of abode from one country to another,
would not b