Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in northern England in 1806, the daughter of a Jamaican slave-holding plantation owner.  She began to compose poetry and became a leading English poet, popular both at home and in the United States. She is famous for her elopement with the poet Robert Browning, for which she was disowned. They had one child, a son.  Sickly all her life, Elizabeth died in Italy of pulmonary illness and is buried in the English Cemetery in Florence.  She was fifty-five years old.  (By John Osborne) 

President Lincoln, at the request of Congress, had in early August issued a proclamation designating the last Thursday in the upcoming month of September as "a day of humiliation, prayer, and fasting for all the people of the nation."  Accordingly, churches and civic groups across the country, especially in the large cities of the North, held observations on this, the designated day.  (By John Osborne) 

President Lincoln, at the request of Congress, issued a proclamation designating the last Thursday in the upcoming month of September as "a day of humiliation, prayer, and fasting for all the people of the nation."  Observations were held across the nation on the designated day, September 28, 1861.  (By John Osborne)