CSA 12a, 10¢ milky blue (old time students call opaline) tied CHARLESTON / S.C. // AUG / 6 / 186_ cds on commercially made cover with name in red sealing wax on back flaps, red crayon “Due” and large “10” for underweight double weight letter to Miss Minnie Mordecai [care of] Hon. M. C. Mordecai, Columbia, S.C. $180.

Hon. Moses Cohen Mordecai - an importer of fruit, sugar, tobacco, and coffee - was Charleston’s most prominent Jewish citizen in the decades before the Civil War. It was Mordecai’s steamer, Isabel, which transferred U.S. Army Major Robert Anderson and his men from Fort Sumter to the Union fleet following the opening bombardment of the Civil War. Isabel, named for Mordecai’s wife, gained fame for breaking through the Yankee blockade of the coast. In February 1865, after Sherman’s troops left Columbia smoldering behind them, the city council appointed Mordecai "food administrator" to help feed the starving citizens. Blind and broken by the war, the reluctant secessionist moved to Baltimore, leaving his son-in-law Edgar Marks Lazarus in charge of his business affairs in South Carolina.