Letter from William Bingham to Mordecai Sheftall, prisoner of war

Prisoners of the British

Mordecai Sheftall (1735-1797) and his brother Levi (1739-1809) were Savannah merchants, who were active in the Jewish community, and who helped to lead the revolutionary effort against the British in Georgia. Mordecai was the state's Commissary General during the war, and was one of the first to rebel against British rule in the colony. Mordecai Sheftall and his son Sheftall Sheftall were captured by the British in 1778 during the siege of Savannah. In this 1780 letter from Continental Congress delegate William Bingham (1752-1804) to Mordecai Sheftall, Bingham laments Sheftall's circumstances and his own inability to ameliorate the situation: "Your situation as a Prisoner of War, with a scanty and illiberal allowance, [and] deprived of the means of procuring yourself necessaries, is peculiarly distressing. I can assure you that it renders me extremely unhappy to be deprived of the Power of relieving you..." Sheftall was eventually released by the British, and he returned to Savannah after the war, where he was recognized as a patriotic hero.