Ship Island is the largest of four islands twelve miles off the Mississippi coast in the Gulf of Mexico.  In July 1861, Confederate troops occupied the island and began to fortify it. Subsequently, the installation was deemed untenable and Confederate troops fired their installations and evacuated.  Sailors of the U.S.S. Massachusetts, with whom the fort had been trading shots for some time, immediately occupied the island and it became an important base for Union operations along the Gulf coast for the remainder of the war.  (By John Osborne)   

Mary Smith Peake had recently been hired by the American Missionary Society to teach recently free slaves who had gathered in large numbers around the Union lines around Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia.  She reportedly held her first classes for "contrabands" on this day, under a tree on the grounds that would become officially in 1868 the Hampton Institute.  (By John Osborne)

Navajo Indians gathered at Fort Fauntleroy in New Mexico for an issue of rations and friendly horseraces between the Navajo and the New Mexico Volunteers stationed there.  A convivial atmosphere was transformed with a disagreement over the final race of the day, the visitors expelled, and a Navajo man shot dead by a sentry.  In all, the troops killed twelve Navajo men, women, and children and wounded around forty more.  (By John Osborne) 

Under cover of darkness a force of sailors and marines from the Union frigate U.S.S. Colorado under the command of Lieutenant John H. Russell raided the Confederate naval base at Pensacola and destroyed the Confederate privateer Judah being fitted out there.  The raiders boarded the Judah, fired her, and then retreated back to the open sea.  Two sailors and a marine were killed in the assault.  (By John Osborne)

The United States Navy was founded when the Continental Congress established a Naval Committee to prepare the Revolution to make war at sea against Great Britain.  Eighty-five years later it was largely at war with itself, with officer corps and infrastructure split between North and South.  (By John Osborne)