The Chandeleur Island Lighthouse, rebuilt in 1855, was an important guide to navigation in the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi River.  Confederate forces took control early in the war but landing parties from the United States warships. Massachusetts, Preble, and Marion retook the islands, installed batteries and relit the lighthouse.  The light was the first the Union recaptured in the Gulf of Mexico.  The islands suffered severely during Hurricane Catrina in 2005 and the modern lighthouse was completely destroyed.  (By John Osborne)

The sloop-of-war U.S.S. Tuscarora had been laid down in June at the Philadelphia Naval Yard by Merrick and Sons shipbuilders as the first of the six new vessels the Congress authorized at the opening of the war.  Almost fifteen hundred tons and 198 feel, she was commissioned on December 3, 1861 and sailed soon after to search for Confederate raiders in the Atlantic. The Tuscarora served throughout the war and in the years following, and was finally sold in 1883.  (By John Osborne) 

As the number of civilians flocked into Civil War service grew, the United States Army finally abolished flogging.  An attempt had been made earlier in the century but the punishment had been reinstated in 1833 for desertion.  Congress had abolished flogging in the Navy in 1850, after a public campaign by Herman Melville, although other corporal punishments were retained.  (By John Osborne)

In northern England, twenty-six year old Martin Doyle was hanged in the Cheshire County Prison for the attempted murder of the woman with whom he was living.  He inflicted serious head injuries but the woman survived to testify against him.  Doyle was the last person ever executed in the United Kingdom for an attempt to murder that was unsuccessful.  

Pennsylvania and Massachusetts troops under Colonel John W. Geary fought a sharp skirmish around Harpers Ferry near Pritchard's Mill on the Potomac.  Virginia troops ambushed a Union patrol in the morning and then attacked the larger force.  Geary's men fought back and by six o'clock had cleared the Confederates from positions on Loudoun Heights and other strongpoints. Geary estimated Virginia casualties at 18 killed.  He lost only one man killed and three wounded and noted the superior range of his Enfield rifles by way of partial explanation.  (By John Osborne)

After just three issues of James A. McMaster's new Catholic journal called the Freeman's Appeal, all largely critical of the Lincoln Administration, Secretary of State Seward ordered the U.S. Marshal in New York, Robert Murray, to arrest McMaster and suspend its publication.  McMaster was imprisoned at Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor.  He was freed on October 23, 1861 after taking a loyalty oath but did not resume publishing till April 1862.  (By John Osborne)  

Federal troops began a systematic search of Baltimore for caches of arms that could either find their way to the South or be used against them on the streets of the city.  Almost immediately, they discovered a hundred rifles concealed beneath the Egeton and Keyes Auction House at Saratoga and North Streets.  Soon after, troops seized around sixty muskets from the armory of the Independent Grays, a city militia unit.  Searches continued over the next few days but few other finds were made. (By John Osborne)