Vermont Republicans met in the state capital to nominate candidates for the state elections in September.  Paul Dillingham, the sitting Lieutenant Governor was chosen as candidate for governor and A.B. Gardner was selected to run for his replacement as Lieutenant-Governor.  Both men won handily in the fall election.  (By John Osborne)

The Universalists of the United States met in their annual General Convention in the Illinois town of Galesburg.  The attendance was reportedly disappointing, with only sixty-six ministers present.  They elected the sitting United States congressman from Maine's second district, Sidney Perham, a long-term Universalist official, as the convention president. The gathering voted to seek closer ties with the Unitarian Churches and then expressed a powerful condemnation of "the disgraceful personal conduct" of President Andrew Johnson and his "manifest sympathy" with former Confederates.  They also voted encouragement to the United States Congress in its counter policies and spoke strongly for "impartial suffrage.".  (By John Osborne) 

A group of former Confederate officers, including well-known figures like Nathan Bedford Forrest, met in a "Southern Soldiers' Convention" in Memphis, Tennessee.  The day before they had communicated with the Union veterans meeting in Cleveland running at the same time their fraternity and loyalty and received a welcoming reply from leading figures their, including George Armstrong Custer.  (By John Osborne) 

A friend of Abraham Lincoln and future father-in-law of Robert Todd Lincoln, James Harlan had left his Iowa U.S. Senate seat when appointed as Secretary of the Interior under President Andrew Johnson in May 1865.  He had a sixteen month often controversial tenure, during which he famously dismissed Walt Whitman on moral grounds after reading in Leaves of Grass. Increasingly out of tune with Johnson's reconstruction policies, he resigned and was immediately returned to the U.S. Senate by the Iowa legislature.  He was succeeded in the cabinet by another Republican, and friend of Lincoln, Orville Browning of Illinois.  (By John Osborne)

President Lincoln had appointed Kentucky native James Speed as his Attorney General in late 1864.  He continued in that role under President Johnson but became increasingly uncomfortable as the administration adopted increasing reconstruction policies and more associated himself with more radical Republican ideas, including the enfranchisement of African-Americans.  Henry Stanbery of Ohio, a more conservative Republican, succeeded him.  (By John Osborne)

William Dennison, Jr., the Postmaster-General of the United States in the Johnson Administration, resigned from his office on this day. A founder member of the Republican Party and former governor of Ohio, Dennison had been appointed by Abraham Lincoln in Spetember 1864.  He told President Andrew Johnson in his letter of resignation that he supported the Fourteenth Amendment and opposed the calling of the National Union Convention in Philadelphia and therefore could no longer support Johnson's reconstruction policies. He was replaced by another Republican, Alexander Randall, former governor of Wisconsin.  (By John Osborne)