The Ohio Unionist Convention was held in Columbus and nominated War Democrat John Brough as its candidate for governor and Republican Charles Anderson as lieutenant governor.  Brough was considered to be more actively anti-slavery than the sitting War Democrat David Tod.  Brough's victory over the Democrat firebrand Clement Vallandigham in November 1863 came as a great relief to President Lincoln.  Brough died in office just after the end of the war, aged fifty-three.  (By John Osborne)

General David Hunter, the fiercely abolitionist friend of Abraham Lincoln, had commanded the Department of the South for more than a year.  He was famous for his efforts to recruit freed slaves in South Carolina for military service and issuing an order he was later forced to rescind that all slaves were free in any area in the South under martial law.  He was replaced in South Carolina by Brigadier General Quincy A. Gillmore. Hunter later served as commander of the Army of the Shenandoah.  (By John Osborne) 

The British-built 1,888 ton Canadian Steamship Line vessel Norwegian had left Liverpool at noon on June 4, 1863 bound for Montreal with 329 passengers but after her Atlantic crossing she was wrecked on St. Paul Island , Nova Scotia.  She struck at around seven in the morning in a thick fog. A heavy gale had been blowing but moderated enough for all of the passengers and crew, along with the mails and much of the luggage aboard to be saved.  (By John Osborne) 

A severe gale hit the Union moorings in St. George Sound, southwest of Tallahassee, Florida. The 368 ton sailing bark, U.S.S. Amanda, with eight guns and a crew of seventy-one, was driven ashore near Dog Island and wrecked.  Unable to be refloated, she was stripped her of her guns and supplies and burned.  The coal tender Andrew Manderson was also wrecked nearby.  No casualties were reported. (By John Osborne)

The baseball team of the Philadelphia Athletic Club, along with around twenty friends, paid a visit to the New York City area to play several games. In the afternoon, in South Brooklyn, they defeated the Excelsior Club 18-17 over ten innings in what observers called an excellent match watched by a crowd of more than three thousand people.  The visitors were scheduled to play the Mutual Club in Hoboken the next day.  (By John Osborne)

Just before midnight on May 24, 1863, the tug Crawford had exploded. Three of the four men aboard were killed instantly while a fourth was blown overboard and survived. The brand new tug, launched only a few weeks before, sank in twenty-five feet of water. Fully three weeks later, Lake Michigan yielded up the bodies of Captain Ezra Ozier and crewman Richard Coughlin, half a mile offshore near Hyde Park. (By John Osborne)

The U.S.S. Shepherd Knapp was an 838 ton,180 foot sailing vessel built in 1856 and purchased for the Navy in New York City in August 1861.  Carrying eleven guns and ninety-three crew, she patrolled in the Caribbean during 1861 and 1863.  She struck a reef in the evening hours off Haiti near Cape Haitien. Her stores and guns were transferred to other ships and she suffered no human losses other than to the pride of her officers.  (By John Osborne)

The Milwaukee and Horicon Railroad had been chartered in 1853 as the third railway line in Wisconsin.  It eventually connected Lake Horicon to Berlin, Wisconsin in 1857.  The company fell into financial diffulties and was sold at a U.S. Marshal's auction for $670,000 and became a part of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad.  (By John Osborne)