The California Legislature convened in Sacramento with a narrow largely pro-slavery majority.  The pro-southern wing of the California Democratic Party, led by William M. Gwin, had done well in the election but the Democrats in the state were beginning to split over the issue of slavery and in the national election in 1860, California's four electoral votes would go to Abraham Lincoln.  (By John Osborne)  

The Illinois Democratic Party Convention met in Springfield and chose delegates for the upcoming national convention in Charleston, South Carolina.  They charged those selected to uphold the 1856 Cincinnati Platform, resist all federal regulations concerning slavery in the territories, and support unanimously Stephen Douglas as the official Democratic Party nominee. (By John Osborne)

In his annual message to the Ohio Legislature, Governor Chase responded to Virginia Governor Wise's condemnation of northern encouragement of slave revolts in the south.  Chase decried such incitement but laid much of the blame for the excitement in the slave states in the aftermath of the Harpers Ferry Raid on southerners themselves, and condemned arrests of strangers and organised demonstrations against northern neighbors. (By John Osborne)

In the early hours of the morning, a grocery store on the ground floor of a four-story brick tenement house on Division Street in New York City caught fire.  The flames spread quickly and, despite bold efforts from occupants and passers-by to rescue all of the dozens of people in the building, a man, a woman, and four children burned to death.  (By John Osborne)