A few hours after midnight, a fire was discovered burning in a large carpentry company in Poughkeepsie, New York.  It spread quickly to a nearby coal yard and at one point threatened to engulf the businesses and vessels in the harbor on the Hudson. With the town "as light as day," all of the fire companies in the area eventually brought the outbreak under control.  Initial estimates of damage reached $30,000 but there were no serious injuries.  (By John Osborne) 

The split in the Democratic Party across the country continued when the Ohio Democratic State Convention met in Columbus on Independence Day, 1860. The meeting voted to endorse the Douglas- Johnson ticket and large numbers of Breckinridge supporters immediately withdrew.  They met that same day at a city hotel and called for another state-wide nominating convention to be held in August in Columbus.  (By John Osborne)

The New York City Council appropriated $7000 for the Fourth of July celebration and this funding expanded firework displays to a dozen squares "from City Hall Park to Harlem."  The largest pyrotechnic display seen to date in the city went off without incident and was witnessed by thousands of New Yorkers.  (By John Osborne)  

In the late evening, a routine fire call at a tavern on Chatham Street, now Park Row and a block from Ground Zero in Manhattan, led to a serious riot between members of feuding New York Fire Companies 13 and 21.  Both were racing to the fire, collided on Center Street and embarked on a lengthy brawl using fire equipment, clubs, and pistols. Half a dozen men were admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds or other injuries, though no injuries were life threatening.  The fire was eventually put out.  (By John Osborne) 

Bret Harte, was born Francis Brett Hart in Albany, New York on August 25, 1836.  He moved to California at age seventeen and settled into a career as a journalist.  On April 29, 1860 he published his first story in the journal he was working for, The Golden Era in San Francisco. This piece, called "My Metamorphosis," was the first in a long career that made Harte famous across the world as the chronicler and story-teller of early California. He died of cancer in England in 1902.  (By John Osborne)

Abraham Lincoln won one of his last law cases when he secured the acquittal of William "Duff" Armstrong on charges of manslaughter at the Cass County Courthouse in Beardstown, Illinois.  Lincoln was very close to the Armstrong family, who had taken him in when he first arrived in the state.  Lincoln famously argued that the prosecution's main witness could not have seen the crime by moonlight since there was no full moon that night, producing a 1857 almanac in court to prove his point.  (By John Osborne)   

Outgoing President Charles Collins had recommended to the College Board of Trustees that the daily time of morning chapel be moved from "before breakfast," often in the dark during winter, to 8:45 a.m..  He also suggested that daily evening prayers be abolished altogether.  The trustees turned both recommendations down flat.  (By John Osborne)