The Internal Revenue Commissioner's annual report dominates the front page, revealing that the U.S. collected $116.9 million in internal revenue taxes during fiscal year 1886—a decline from previous years. The detailed report shows troubling trends: illicit stills are proliferating (564 seized, mostly in Georgia, the Carolinas, and Kentucky), and distillers are forming suspicious associations to control production and manipulate market prices when taxes come due. The Commissioner warns Congress that these combinations pose a serious threat to tax collection and recommends new legislation to prevent fraud. Meanwhile, a darker story emerges from Arkansas: a mob of 35 armed men stormed the Harrison jail, dragged accused murderer Andrew J. Mulligan behind a galloping horse for four blocks, hanged him from a tree, and riddled his body with bullets—a chilling snapshot of frontier justice. Also reported: over 200 feet of riverbank in Plaqueminе, Louisiana caved into the Mississippi, destroying buildings and threatening the town's commercial future.

This November 1886 edition captures America in a pivotal moment of post-Reconstruction tension. The emphasis on illegal whiskey production and tax evasion in the South reflects the lingering economic resentment of former Confederate states, where moonshining remained a form of resistance against federal authority. The lynching in Arkansas—reported matter-of-factly, almost as routine—reveals the absence of functioning legal institutions in frontier areas and foreshadows the epidemic of racial violence that would dominate the 1890s-1920s. The revenue disputes also show an emerging struggle between federal power and industrial interests: distillers were already organizing themselves into monopolistic combinations to escape taxation, a corporate strategy that would define the Gilded Age and trigger the antitrust movement.

• The Commissioner reports that the cost of collecting internal revenue jumped from 3.9% of taxes collected in the prior year to about 3% in 1886—seemingly small, but translating to a $1 million swing ($4.4 million to $2.99 million), suggesting massive fraud and evasion requiring more enforcement resources.
• Five thousand of the registered grain distilleries were 'fruit distilleries'—a coded way of describing illegal stills producing spirits from fermented fruit, circumventing federal tax by operating under an agricultural guise.
• A Confederate check for $80,900, dated April 14, 1865—five days after Lee's surrender—is in the possession of Col. J.K. Caldwell in Dallas. It was delivered in the woods before Confederate forces even knew the war had ended, a poignant artifact of the collapsing Southern government.
• The report notes that bourbon and rye whiskey in warehouse storage on June 30, 1886 exceeded the amount at the same date the year prior—despite massive withdrawals—indicating distillers were deliberately stockpiling spirits to flood the market after tax obligations passed.
• A Chinese steamship called the Takataman burst its boiler in a gale near Niagara, drowning 96 people including English officers—buried in a small news brief, suggesting maritime disasters were so common they barely warranted prominence.

• Commissioner Joseph S. Miller's 115-page annual report reveals that cigars and cigarettes production exploded by 433 million units that year—the tobacco industry was rapidly industrializing and consolidating, a trend that would make cigarettes the dominant form of tobacco consumption within a generation.
• The report notes distillers were forming 'associations' to control production and prevent market flooding when taxes came due. This is essentially cartel behavior—what would later prompt the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) and become the centerpiece of Theodore Roosevelt's trust-busting agenda.
• Illicit stills were seized 'principally in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia'—the exact regions that would remain centers of illegal whiskey production through Prohibition (1920-1933) and beyond, creating a 70-year underground economy.
• The lynching in Harrison, Arkansas occurred with apparent impunity and is reported as a straightforward news item, not a scandal. By 1900, Ida B. Wells's anti-lynching journalism would make such violence internationally controversial, but in 1886 it was still treated as a regional law-enforcement matter.
• Morgan won a six-day bicycle race in Minneapolis by covering 749 miles in 48 hours (riding 8 hours per day), setting a record by 160 miles. The bicycle craze was just beginning; within 15 years, bikes would spark debates about women's rights, fashion, and urban planning.