Adding to the confusion along the Texas/Mexico border and the danger of an international incident, Colonel Isaac Davis and black volunteers from his 118th U.S.C.T., along with a group of American "adventurers" led by R. Clay Crawford, had crossed the Rio Grande and taken control of the Mexican border port of Bagdad, then in the hands of Imperial Mexican forces rumored to be holding American prisoners.  Davis had withdrawn his men almost immediately, leaving Crawford and his men to loot the town.  Liberal Mexican insurgent forces arrived the next day to take charge but order was not restored until days later, when U.S. General Godfrey Wietzel, regional commander in Texas, arrived, declared military law, and arrested Crawford and his men.  (By John Osborne)

Adding to the confusion along the Texas/Mexico border and the danger of an international incident, Colonel Isaac Davis and black volunteers from his 118th U.S.C.T. along with a group of American "adventurers" led by R. Clay Crawford, crossed the Rio Grande and took control of the Mexican border port of Bagdad, then in the hands of Imperial Mexican forces.  Davis withdrew his men almost immediately, leaving Crawford and his men to loot the town.  Liberal Mexican insurgent forces arrived the next day to take charge but order was not restored until days later, when U.S. General Godfrey Wietzel, regional commander in Texas, arrived, declared military law and arrested Crawford and his men.  (By John Osborne)

The new metric system of uniform weights and measures had been adopted as mandatory in France in 1840 and then taken up across much of Europe in the following decades.  The U.S. Senate took the final action on legislation that would permit the United States Post Office and all other federal departments to use the metric system for measurements when needed, especially with interactions with foreign organizations.  The measure did not disturb the current old British system then in use, nor did it make the use of the new system obligatory.  (By John Osborne)

Representatives of the 42,000 member African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church met in a special General Conference at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania specifically to discuss an official union with the larger African Methodist Episcopal Church.  Although the discussion was largely in support of such a move, it was decided that an extraordinary session could not make a final determination and the decision was postponed.  In the end, the two churches co-operated but remained officially separate for many years.  (By John Osborne)

The Primitive Methodist Church held its twenty-second annual national meeting at New Diggings, Wisconsin with Thomas Leckley in the chair. Located largely in southwest Wisconsin and eastern Illinois, and not so large as the parent church in the United Kingdom founded in 1807, the body still boasted more than two thousand members in thirty-six churches. (By John Osborne)

Following the remarkable rise of the Methodist Episcopal Church's Holston Conference in eastern Tennessee, which had grown from its founding in early 1865 to more than eighteen thousand members, a second Methodist Conference was organized in Tennessee called the "Tennessee Conference." Founded on this date the new conference already had almost twenty-eight hundred members. The Methodists, an anti-slavery denomination before the war, were growing strongly across the South.  (By John Osborne)