Elias Boudinot, a Founding Father of the United States, was a lawyer, statesman, and early abolitionist and women's rights advocate from Elizabeth, New Jersey. During the Revolutionary War, Boudinot was an intelligence officer and prisoner-of-war commissary under general George Washington, working to improve conditions for prisoners on both the American and British sides. In 1779, he was elected to the Continental Congress and then to its successor, the Congress of the Confederation, serving as President of Congress in 1782—1783, the final years of the war.

During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), management and treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) were very different from the standards of modern warfare. Modern standards, as outlined in the Geneva Conventions of later centuries, assume that captives will be held and cared for by their captors. One primary difference in the 18th century was that care and supplies for captives were expected to be provided by their own combatants or private resources.