A U.S. Navy task force of three steam warships, the Water Witch, the New London, and the Henry Lewis, sent to investigate Biloxi Harbor for Confederate vessels, demanded the surrender of the town under thrreat of bombardment.  Mayor James Fewell acceded immediately and sailors and marines were landed to destroy the small two-gun Confederate battery near the lighthouse. No casualties or other damage was reported.  (By John Osborne)

Philip St. George Cocke, a handsome West Point graduate, president of the board of trustees of the Virginia Military Institute, and one the wealthiest planters in Virginia, had commanded a brigade at the battle of Bull Run at Manassas in July 1861.  After eight months of service, however, though physically fit, he returned home to his plantation "Belmead," in Powhatan County, Virginia with clear emotional problems and shot himself in the head there the day after Christmas.  He was fifty-two years old. (By John Osborne)  

In Washington D.C., a large U.S. Government livery stable near the Naval Observatory in Foggy Bottom took fire.  The conflagration killed around a third of the horses kept there. The fire was reported as accidental. (By John Osborne)

Near Bird Creek in the Indian Territory, opposing forces made up almost entirely of rival Native American tribes clashed in a small but fiercely fought battle, now known as the Battle of Chusto-Talasah.  Unionists of the Creek and Seminole tribes under Chief Opothleyahola were driven from entrenched positions by Chocktaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee Confederates, supported by Texas Cavalry.  Casualties numbered no more than a dozen killed on each side on a battleground five miles from present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma. (By John Osborne)

General John Pope's Union forces dealt a blow to Confederate hopes in Missouri when he surprised and captured almost a thousand newly recruited Missouri State Guardsmen under Colonel Franklin Robertson at Blackwater Creek, near Milford, in Johnson County, Missouri. Most of the prisoners had been enlisted just days before in the central part of the state and had only just elected their officers.  Union casualties were extremely light, with only two men killed.  (By John Osborne)   

At around 8:30 p.m., a fire broke out in a sash and blind factory on Hasell Street in Charleston, South Carolina and quickly spread thanks to a strong north-west wind.  By the time it burned itself out it had destroyed 575 structures and scorched 540 acres, around a third of the city.  Among the buildings completely destroyed were St. Andrew's Hall on Broad, where the Secession Convention had met, and the Institute Hall nearby, where the Ordinance of Secession had been signed. Recovery was long and slow during the war years.  (By John Osborne)