Earl Van Dorn was a capable cavalry leader famous for his pursuit of the opposite sex.  While stationed in Spring Hill, Tennessee, he had met Jessie McKissack Peters, attractive wife of a local doctor named James Bodie Peters. Dr. Peters confronted Van Dorn at his headquarters late at night and shot him in the head from behind.  Van Dorn lived for a few hours but died of his wounds.  Peters was never brought to trial. Questions remain today over this case, including Peters' Unionist connections and the paternity of a daughter born nine months later.  (By John Osborne)

When General Ambrose Burnside shut down the Chicago Times on June 1, 1863 for what he called "rank treason," twenty thousand Chicagoans protested in the streets that evening.  On June 3, 1863, the Illinois state house strongly protested the action. Protest continued around the country and President Lincoln suggested to Secretary of War Stanton that he have Burnside suspend his order.   The Times reopened after three days of being shuttered under military law. (By John Osborne)

Under its editor Wilbur Fiske Storey, the Chicago Times had long been hostile to Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party, and government policy, calling the Emancipation Proclamation "monstrous usurpation" and protesting particularly vehemently the military arrest and banishment of Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vannandigham.  On Burnside's action, twenty thousand Chicagoans protested in the streets that evening and President Lincoln later recommended rescinding the order.  The Times reopened four days after its closing. (By John Osborne)