A very early frost struck much of the grain growing areas of the United States on this day.  Significant portions of the maize and sorghum crops were damaged and the wheat harvest was disrupted. (By John Osborne) 

Years of fighting between the Boer settlers of the Orange Free State and the Basuto peoples were halted with a treaty signed at Thaba Bosiu by Basulto leader Moshoeshoe in which large areas were ceded to the Boers.  The halt was temporary, however, and hostilities broke out again in 1867.  In danger of being completely overrun, Moshoeshoe appealed to the British for annexation and this was granted in March 1868 and the tribal area became a part of the British Empire as Basutoland. (By John Osborne)

The British consul in Madagascar, Thomas Pakenham, and his diplomatic counterpart exchanged the formal ratification of a treaty negotiated the year before between the United Kingdom and Queen Rasoherina of Madagascar.  A major element of the treaty was to open the island to British Christian missionaries and provide any converts among the local population the freedom to practice without fear as Christians.  Britons could also own land and engage in commerce. This confirmed several decades of strong British influence on the island.  (By John Osborne)

Colonel Henry Carrington and a large force began his march from Fort Laramie into the Big Horn Mountains with the goal of building a series of forts along the Bozeman Trail to the west.  The action, which included the construction of Fort Phil Kearney in present-day Johnson County, Wyoming, incited fierce Native American resistance under Lakota chief Red Cloud.  What became know as Red Cloud's War lasted into 1868, when the U.S. Army was forced to withdraw the incursion and abandon Fort Phil Kearney.  (By John Osborne)

Under the reorganization of the post-war U.S. Army, two regiments of African-American Cavalry had been authorized and on this day the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry regiments came into being.  The Ninth was organized in Louisiana under Colonel Edward Hatch and the Tenth at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under Colonel Benjamin Grierson.  All enlisted men were black and all officers were white.  The two regiments served through the Indian Wars, gaining the nickname "Buffalo Soldiers," and also fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.  (By John Osborne) 

William Potter Grier, the only son of 1813 Dickinson College graduate Supreme Court Justice Robert Cooper Grier and his wife, Isabelle, was a military doctor in the Regular Army being transported with his unit on the riverboat Miami when it exploded.  Sitting with a group of officers around a stove aboard the steamer, he and the others reportedly bore the brunt of the boiler explosion below decks and were never seen again.  William Grier was thirty-two years old.  (By John Osborne)

A  four day North Carolina Freedmen's Convention with around a hundred delegates from around the state was held in Raleigh with James H. Harris in the chair.  The sitting state governor Jonathan Worth addressed the meeting briefly on the second afternoon and the former governor William W. Holden spoke on the third day.  Many of the speeches from the delegates complained of the treatment that African-Americans were currently suffering at the hands of lawless white citizens. (By John Osborne)