Henry and Mary Warner lived in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, now part of Pittsburgh. They are the great-grandparents of poet Marianne Moore. By the 1860s they had three surviving children: John, Henry, and Annie. Their letters to John, a Presbyterian minister living in Gettysburg, are preserved as part of Marianne Moore’s family papers.
Transcript (excerpt):
“We have been plodding along in our old usual way, looking forward for merry Christmas, and also having every reason to suppose that before another year rolls around an eventful time will transpire: anarchy, confusion & bloodshed, will be the order of the day in these United States; I can hardly think it possible, a dissolution of the Union will take place without bloodshed; Read Judges 20th & see how brother fell upon brother for this high handed iniquity, owing to our sins we have good reason to expect something similar, we will be made instruments in the hand of Providence for executing chastisement on each other.
Citation: Henry & Mary Warner,autograph letter to John Riddle Warner. Allegheny City, 19 December 1860. Moore VI:04:13
In South Carolina a state convention is meeting to consider that state’s secession from the Union. In Washington the Congress is considering the “Crittendoen Compromise” presented by Sen. John J. Crittendon of Kentucky. The compromise is a series of constitutional amendments that would stop the expansion of slavery north of the old Missouri Compromise line (36 degrees 30 minutes north) and guarantee it where it existed. If passed this would become the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.