In Laconia, New Hampshire, a fire began in the stable of the Cerro Gordo Hotel, spread to the hotel itself, then raced down the main street, destroying practically every business in the small town.  The post office and the telegraph office were among the thirty-five buildings burned.  Damage was estimated at around $125,000 but no serious injuries were reported.  (By John Osborne) 

Governor Sam Houston of Texas was both adamant in his dedication to the Union and acutely aware that his fellow Texans were pushing to join the other lower slave states in secession.  Hoping to cool the political atmosphere, he invited all the southern governors to meet in conference in Austin, his own state's capital.  Not a single governor replied to his invitation.  Texas seceded from the United States on February 1, 1861.  (By John Osborne) 

Golden, the main town in what is now Jefferson County, Colorado, became the capital of the non-sanctioned "Jefferson Territory" which local citizens had instituted in the wake of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush in late 1859.  Jefferson Territory operated a General Assembly representing twelve counties until turning over its jurisdiction to the federally-mandated new Colorado Territory on February 28, 1861. (By John Osborne)

The eight wagon Otter-Van Orman emigrant train came under attack from hostile Indians on the Snake River about fifty miles west of Salmon Falls in present-day Idaho. The families defended the wagon for several days before being forced to scatter.  At the end of an ordeal that lasted for more than six weeks, eighteen had been killed and the sixteen survivors were barely alive when an Army relief force found them in late October 1860.  (By John Osborne) 

A meeting of medical students from Southern states was called at very short notice and held in the evening at Democratic Party Headquarters on Broadway in New York City.  Speeches were heard decrying the election of the Republicans and the probably impact upon the slave states.  Then resolutions were adopted that all should withdraw from Northern institutions and return to the South the moment that secession began.  (By John Osborne)