Smyrna Times

Mississippi has ratified the Constitutional Amendment with conditions and reservations. Her Legislature declares that their assent shall not be construed into an abridgment of the precious doctrines of State Sovereignty, nor into a consent that Congress may abolish Slavery in any State that refuses to ratify. The Mississippi lawyers have got a new edition of Story and expound the Amendment as inoperative except in such States as expressly assent to it, no matter whether three-fourths do or not. Their third proviso is that the second section 'shall not be construed' as a grant of power to Congress to legislate in respect to the freedmen.

Will Congress and the Supreme Court be kind enough to take notice?

Apropos of the freedmen, this same Legislature saw fit to pass a law prohibiting freedmen from renting or leasing lands—a specimen brick of the house they mean to build for the freedmen to live in. The President straightway ordered this law to be disregarded, and Gen. Howard issued an order to Col. Thomas to continue to protect the freedmen in the right to lease lands. That is all right and proper and necessary, but does it not properly raise a question as to the precise condition of the State wherein the President may nullify a law by his executive order? Is Mississippi reconstructed, or is she not? If she is, how can the President interfere with her municipal affairs? If she is not, what right has she to ratify a Constitutional Amendment?