Two Cincinnati policemen, Officers Clairborne Long and Daniel Hallam, were stabbed late in the evening at a house of prostitution in the city.  Both died the next day and two brothers, Constance and Romain Lohrer were arrested for the crime.  A mob soon formed to storm the prison and lynch the culprits.  The mayor, however, had dispatched a local volunteer unit, the Guthrie Grays, to defend the building and this attack was dispersed.  (By John Osborne)  

In Rochester, New York, several prominent abolitionists, including Samuel May and Susan Anthony, tried to hold an evening meeting to decry any attempts to compromise with the South in the sectional crisis.  A large mob, cheering for the Union, gathered and prevented the meeting taking place as well as the hanging of its large sign "No Compromise with Slavery" across Buffalo Street.  (By John Osborne)

In Augusta, the Maine legislature elected Lot Myrick Morrill, a former governor of the state, as its new United States senator.  Morrill was selected to replace Hannibal Hamlin, the sitting senator, who had resigned on his election as Abraham Lincoln's vice-president.  He served in the Senate for the next fifteen years, with only a short break in 1869 till his nomination as Secretary of the Treasury under Grant in 1876.  (By John Osborne)

The stern-wheel steamboat Frontier City, built just months before in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hit an underwater obstruction near Napoleon, Arkansas at the mouth of the Arkansas River and quickly sank.  Ironically, its cargo consisted of salvaged goods from the earlier sinkings of the Cedar Rapids and the A.V. Sevier.  No loss of life or serious injury was reported.  (By John Osborne)

Democrats over the country celebrated the annual anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans in honor of its victor, Andrew Jackson.  This year the commentary was especially poignant since New Orleans was then urging secession and Jackson had famously threatened military action against recalcitrant states during his presidency.  In New York City, a grand ball was held at the St. Nicolas Hotel.  (By John Osborne) 

On the orders of Governor Andrew B. Moore, Alabama state troops took over the Mount Vernon Arsenal in Mobile County. The depot's commander, Major Jesse L. Reno, was able to mount no resistance as twenty thousand small arms, hundreds of barrels of powder, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition fell into secessionist hands. Reno was to serve as a general officer during the war and was killed at the head of his IX Corps at the Battle of South Mountain in September 1862. (By John Osborne)

Fifty-six African-American emigrants sailed for Port-a-Prince in Haiti aboard the 200 ton schooner Janet Kedstone under a resettlement program that James Redpath's Boston Bureau of  Emigration had sponsored.  They received free passage, a sixteen acre farm on Haiti, and exemption from military service. Redpath's scheme, funded in part by the Haitian government lasted until 1862 and hundred took up the offer.  (By John Osborne)