http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/...es-slavery-amendment-20130218,0,7978766.story I just...wow, guys. Way to be on the ball, there.
Gawker nailed the headline though: Mississippi Finally Gets Around to Abolishing Slavery Thanks to Some Guy Who Watched Lincoln
For sure. Wow, how embarrassing. Wait, what? Hey Mississippi, the filing error is not the embarrassing part.
Fairly hilarious. I mean I sorta kinda get why it might take that long (first the whole Jim Crow / Lost Cause thing, then probably it had been long enough and the legislature had better things to do). But holy hell the bad optics so outweigh any legit excuse.
Well, as someone pointed out in the comments, the fact that Mississipi didn't ratify it made no difference because it became law anyway as soon as the constitutional amendment was ratified by everyone else. I did a bit of checking and found this handy-dandy page which lists all the amendments and the dates on which each state ratified them. No amendment has ever been ratified by all states of the Union.
Huh, the history of the thirteenth is interesting. Most states ratify in the 1865-66 timeline, as expected. Then Texas (lol) in 1870, Deleware in 1901 (what the heck). Then Kentucky in '76 and finally Mississippi. Also it was actually rejected by four states: Deleware, Kentucky, Jersey, and Mississippi. Deleware iirc had a small but vocal contingent of slaveholders. NJ was a bizarre case, it was one of the last northern states to abolish slavery and for some reason was a real hotbed of pro-slavery sentiment up through the Civil War.
So what did everyone think it was going to be when they saw the thread preview in the main index? "Mississippi finally bans ..." Surely I'm not the only one who thought "science", right?
Best thing about that link is that I learned this about the 27th amendment: Who says our government is slow to get things done?
