1850 Fitz Henry Warren & Secretary of Navy William Alexander Graham duo-signed letter

September 12, 1850 letter signed by William Alexander Graham as United States Secretary of the Navy, addressed to John G. Walker of 2nd congressional district, Iowa.  Includes additional notation signed by Fitz Henry Warren.  Official correspondence between a man who later would represent the Confederacy in the Confederate Senate (North Carolina) and the man who would rise through the ranks in his support for the Union in the Civil War.  Fold marks and top staining, with condition as pictured.

Historical/political context for this 1850 exchange:

Fitz Henry Warren was appointed First Assistant Postmaster General by President Zachary Taylor in 1849.  After the death of Taylor in July, 1850, Warren resigned his position in protest of President Millard Fillmore's support of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (signed September 18, 1850).

Warren was chairman of the Des Moines County Iowa delegation to the convention of 1856 that organized the Republican Party and nominated John C. Frémont as the first Republican presidential candidate.

In 1861 Fitz Henry Warren was one of the chief editorial writers for the New York Tribune and the author of the controversial "On to Richmond" articles published following the First Battle of Bull Run.

Fitz Henry Warren returned to Iowa following the Battle of the First Bull Run and, as Colonel, helped raise the 1st Regiment Iowa Volunteer Cavalry. On July 18, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Warren brigadier general of volunteers, to rank from July 16, 1862, with a command in the army in Missouri under Major General Samuel R. Curtis.

In 1863 General Warren was the leading candidate before the Republican State Convention for Governor of Iowa, but was defeated. 

Warren was mustered out of the volunteers on August 24, 1865.  On February 21, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Warren for appointment to the grade of brevet major general of volunteers, to rank from August 24, 1865, and the United States Senate confirmed the appointment on April 26, 1866.