Washington D.C. held municipal elections on this day with black men voting and assisting at polling places for only the second time ever. Republicans won all the city-wide contests and a strong majority on both the Board of Common Council and the Board of Alderman, together with five of seven wards. African-American turnout was estimated at around ninety percent of eligible voters and helped place the city firmly in the hards of largely radical Republicans. (By John Osborne)

Civil War General George E. Cole walked up to Judge L. Harris Hiscock at the reception desk of the Stanwix Hall Hotel in Albany, New York, placed a pistol to his head and shot him once through the brain.  Hiscock, who was in Albany as a delegate to the New York Constitutional Convention, died within minutes.  Cole claimed to have an admission from his wife that Hiscock, her family lawyer, had "partly by force" begun an affair with her in the summer of 1864 while Cole was away at the war. He was charged with first degree murder but after two trials was later acquitted by reason of insanity.  (By John Osborne) 

A celebrated international match-up in rackets between the twenty-one year old English Champion William Gray and Frederick Foulkes of New York for a reported purse of a thousand sovereigns took place over two days at the New York Racket Court on Thirteenth Street in New York City.  The large amounts of money wagered was won and lost when Gray emerged victorious.  A later return engagement was held on the other side of the Atlantic, at the Ulster Racket Club in Belfast.  (By John Osborne) 

The former Union 1428 ton warship U.S.S. Quaker City, now remodeled and in private hands, sailed this rainy Saturday from New York Harbor on a five month tour of the Mediterranean and the Holy Land, with a side trip to the Paris Exhibition.  Among the approximately seventy passengers aboard, each of whom had paid $1,250 for the privilege, was Samuel Clemens, who under his pen-name Mark Twain would in 1869 publish his famous The Innocents Abroad. The book made Clemens a small fortune and remains one of the best-selling travel books of all time. (By John Osborne)

A parade of Charleston firefighters, led by the Stonewall Jackson Company, had just begun their parade through the city when local Union commander General Daniel Sickles halted them and told them they could not continue without finding a United States flag that would be displayed, head the marchers, and be saluted by all who passed.  Although some Northern newspaper reports gave emphasis to later complaints and some participants went home, the flag was found and reportedly the firefighters, largely ex-Confederate soldiers, respectfully saluted.  (By John Osborne)

Department of the Missouri commander General Winfield Scott Hancock had marched 1,400 men, including George Armstrong Custer's recently organized Seventh Cavalry, to Fort Larned in Kansas.  His orders were to negotiate the security of the Santa Fe Trail and he had met with Cheyenne and Sioux leaders in their village near Fort Larned on April 12, 1867.  He had brought a strong force with him and this so frightened the families there that the tribes left the village the next day.  Hancock assumed this flight meant warlike intent, sent Custer in pursuit, and burned the abandoned village on this day, further souring relations between the government and the Native American tribes.  (By John Osborne)