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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Petition from Neal McNeale concerning an exchange of prisoners
McNeale, Neal
1779
Volume 22, Pages 893-894


State of North Carolina.

To His Excellency Richard Caswell, Esq., Governor, Captain-General and Commander in Chief in and over the State aforesaid, and to the Honorable the Members of Council:

The memorial and petition of Captain Neale McNeale, late commander of the privateer called the Mosquito, informs your Excellency and Honors that he has been a prisoner of war ever since the 2nd day of August last past, with four of his men, and confined in the public jail in New Bern at a very great expense, independent of the allowance made by the public for prisoners of war, which allowance he has never received. Your memorialist and petitioner further begs leave to present to your Excellency and Honors that there are at this time in the town of New Bern, and have been a cansiderable time past, many prisoners of war confined in different parts of this State at the expense of the public of North Carolina. And as your Excellency and Honors are daily informed that many vessels belonging to this State are taken and carried to New York and other ports under the control of the British armies and fleets, and, of course, a number of the subjects of this State are in captivity; your petitioner, in behalf of himself and others under the same circumstances, requests that your Excellency and Honors will make use of your exertions for the proper establishment of a cartel between this State and the city of New York and the other States in

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possession of the British armies and fleets for an exchange of prisoners, according to their respective ranks, upon terms honorable to the contending powers of America and Great Britain. Your memorialist, confiding in your Excellency’s well known benevolence and philanthropy to mankind in general and being fully informed of the good disposition of your Council, humbly requests that you and they will, as soon as you can, give that relief to the subjects of this State, and your petitioner and others now in captivity. And, as in duty bound, your petitioner will ever pray.

NEALE McNEALE.