May 24, 1861
- Col. Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth of the 11th New York Fire Zouaves is killed in the Marshall House Inn in Alexandria, Virginia, after he and his men removed a Confederate flag. He is generally regarded as the first officer killed while on duty in the American Civil War.
- Sterling Price refuses to disband his troops.
- Benjamin Butler uses the term “contraband” to describe slaves who have crossed into the Northern camps
A Chronological History of the Civil War in America1
- Arlington Heights and the city of Alexandria occupied by federal troops. Col. Ellsworth shot by the rebel Jackson.
- Southern mails stopped.
- A Chronological History of the Civil War in America by Richard Swainson Fisher, New York, Johnson and Ward, 1863