Removing a peculiar asterisk

IT'S JAW-DROPPING but official. Some 147 years after the Union ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, and (as SNL noted) 4 months after Lincoln opened in theaters, the Magnolia State has freed the slaves. According to ABC News, until February 7, 2013, the state Mississippi had never submitted the required documentation to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, meaning it never officially had abolished slavery. Talk about par for the course. William Faulkner famously said, "To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi." That, alas, means I'll never understand the world.