Around sunset on the first day of the two day battle at Fair Oaks, Virginia, General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Confederate army defending Richmond in the engagement, had been badly wounded on the battlefield.  General G.W. Smith took command for the rest of the battle but the day after the fighting Confederate president Jefferson Davis made the momentous decision appointed his military advisor Robert E. Lee as field commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.  (By John Osborne)  

Around sunset on the first day of the two day battle at Fair Oaks, Virginia, General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Confederate army defending Richmond in the engagement, was first hit in the shoulder with a rifle bullet and then knocked from his horse by the impact of an exploding Union shell nearby.  General G.W. Smith took command for the rest of the battle but the day after the fighting Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed his military advisor Robert E. Lee as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.  (By John Osborne)  

The Army of Northern Virginia engaged the Union Army under General George B. McClellan threatening the Confederate capital of Richmond at Fair Oaks Station, Virginia in the largest battle yet fought in the East.  Fighting went on for two days and around a thousand men were killed on each side with thousands more wounded.  Among the wounded, crucially, was Johnston himself, who was replaced as army commander the day after the battle by General Robert E. Lee. (By John Osborne)

Dickinson College alumnus and wealthy slaveholder Richard Bennett Carmichael was a judge on the Eastern Shore of Maryland who had been scrupulous in applying state laws to cases brought before him that he considered violations of civil liberties.  Since this meant that he was freeing mostly southern sympathizers, Federal officials took notice and on this day arrested Judge Carmichael in his courtroom and, after a struggle that left him unconscious, imprisoned him for almost six months without trial.  He returned to the courtroom but resigned in 1864.  (By John Osborne)

After defeats by superior Confederate forces under Major General T.J. Jackson at Front Royal and Winchester, Major General N.P. Banks's command retreated for sixty miles to the banks of the Potomac River and safely crossed over into Maryland at  Williamsport.  This ended for now the Union campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, once again put Washington DC at risk, and distracted the Union Army from its advance on Richmond.  (By John Osborne)

Adophe Nicole, a Swiss-born watchmaker now with a workshop in Soho Square in London, had in 1844 taken out a patent on a clock that could be stopped and restarted.  His1862 British patent was an improvement on this to the point that his chronograph, which could be stopped, restarted, and reset, immediately made it possible to record elapsed time with great accuracy, the advent of the modern stopwatch.  (By John Osborne)