The Replevin Law of 1861. Natchez Courier Extra...July 22, 1865 [caption title]

Natchez, Ms: July 22, 1865. Very good.. Broadside, 13.75 x 9.5 inches. Printed in three columns. Moderate toning and foxing, old folds, couple of small tears expertly repaired on verso, two tape remnants at top edge likely from previous matting. A very rare newspaper extra printing the first civilian law in Occupied Mississippi following the conclusion of the Civil War. After the war, only military justice was in force in Mississippi. According to an 1866 Mississippi court case: "civil government of the State having been subverted, and all power having passed into the hands of the authorities of the United States, the question whether any, and what, civil government should be permitted, was a matter in the discretion of those authorities. During this military occupation, the laws of the State could only operate so far as they chose to allow, and could only be administered by such agents as they pleased to appoint." On June 13, 1865, President Andrew Johnson appointed William Lewis Sharkey (1789-1873) - a Mississippi judge and staunch Unionist who opposed secession - as the state's provisional governor. His first public act was to appoint judges and clerks to probate courts, as well as appoint police, justices of the peace, and other country officers, and authorized them to immediately begin to discharge their duties, but excluded any orders regarding circuit and chancery courts.

Two days later, on July 3, Sharkey ordered the first civilian law to be operative, which is published in the present broadside newspaper extra by the Natchez Courier. Sharkey's transmittal at the top begins: "Ordered. That the act in regard to the action of replevin, and the amendments thereto passed by the legislature of Mississippi, since the 9th day of January, 1861, be and the same is hereby declared to be in full force from this date." The text of the act, in twenty-six sections, is then printed, beginning: "The Replevin Act. An Act to provide for the speedy recovery of personal property wrongfully taken or detained." Somewhat oddly at the time, this was the only civilian law in effect in Mississippi in the summer of 1865. According to the same 1866 court case excerpted above, which explains the issues inherent in the issuance of the Replevin Law and Sharkey's organization of county probate courts, "in all cases of the wrongful taking or detention of personal property, a summary remedy by action of replevin before two justices of the peace, was given to the party injured, to recover the property and damages for the wrongful taking or detention. This was the only court created by the governor for the adjudication of legal rights; and these are the only cases committed to its jurisdiction; leaving all the rest of the immense mass of legal rights wholly without any redress." OCLC and other newspaper sources reveal just a single mutilated copy of the present broadside, at the American Antiquarian Society. A fantastic broadside dealing with Mississippi law at the outset of Reconstruction.
Scott v. Bilgerry, April Term, 1866, in Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Errors and Appeals for the State of Mississippi. Vol. XL. (New York: Bank Brothers, 1867), pp. 119-157.