Judah P. Benjamin

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Judah Benjamin (credit: Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born Aug. 6, 1811, St. Croix, Virgin Islands — died May 6, 1884, Paris, France) Prominent lawyer in the U.S. and Britain and member of the Confederate cabinet. He moved with his parents from St. Croix to South Carolina in his early youth. In 1832 he began building a successful law practice in New Orleans. He was the first Jew elected to the U.S. Senate (1853 – 61), where he was noted for his proslavery speeches. After the South seceded, Jefferson Davis appointed him attorney general (1861), secretary of war (1861 – 62), and secretary of state (1862 – 65). Late in the war he enraged many white Southerners by urging that slaves be recruited into the Confederate army and emancipated after their term of service. At the end of the war he escaped to England, where he was called to the bar (1866) and served as queen's counsel (1872).

For more information on Judah Philip Benjamin, visit Britannica.com.

Benjamin, Judah Philip (1811-84) U.S. senator, Confederate cabinet member, and lawyer, born at Christiansted, St. Croix, West Indies. The first (acknowledged) Jew elected to the U.S. Senate (1852), Benjamin became known as “the brains of the Confederacy” by serving not only as its attorney general, secretary of war, and secretary of state, but also as a close adviser and confidant to President Jefferson Davis and Varina Howell Davis. As secretary of state, Benjamin arranged the Erlanger loan from a Paris bank to the Confederacy (1863), the only significant European loan of the war, and drew up instructions for Confederate peace commissioners who met with President Abraham Lincoln and William H. Seward at the Hampton Roads Conference (1865).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

An American lawyer and statesman, Judah Philip Benjamin (1811-1884) served in the Cabinet of the Confederate president Jefferson Davis until the end of the Civil War.

Judah Benjamin was born a British subject on St. Thomas, British West Indies, Aug. 11, 1811. His parents moved to Wilmington, N.C., about 1813 and later to Charleston, S. C. Benjamin attended Yale College, where his student days were dogged with rumored scandal. He read law in New Orleans and was admitted to the bar in 1832. He and his friend John Slidell published a summary of decisions made by the territorial government and Supreme Court of Louisiana which became a standard legal guide. Benjamin devoted most of his attention to commercial law and became a widely admired practitioner. He once declined appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1852, Benjamin strongly defended the South's position and was an acknowledged leader of the pro-Southern congressional faction. He resigned from the Senate in 1861 to become attorney general in the Confederate Cabinet. His brilliant legal mind made him invaluable to President Jefferson Davis, and as the bond of trust and friendship between the two deepened, Davis gave Benjamin increased responsibility. He called on him to serve as secretary of war for a brief time. But Benjamin earned Confederate congressional disapproval as secretary of war - various largely unavoidable military failures were fastened upon him - and many Southern lawmakers wanted the Jewish leader expelled from the government.

Davis yielded to pressure, yet defied it. After removing Benjamin from the war post, he appointed him secretary of state in 1862, and the choice was a wise one. Benjamin could not win foreign recognition of the Confederacy - the main goal of Confederate diplomacy; and he counseled President Davis too long in the ways of traditional negotiation. But when he realized that military reverses had cooled foreign ardor for Southern recognition, he persuaded President Davis to take a course of secondary diplomacy, which proved highly successful. Benjamin recognized that blockade-running was vital to sustaining Southern supplies, and he sent "commercial agents" to Bermuda, the West Indies, and Cuba to open ports to Confederate blockade-runners. The system, after mid-1863, was expanded and brought rich rewards to investors, shipowners, and the Confederate Army. In this area Benjamin performed his most valuable service to the South.

When the Confederacy collapsed, Benjamin escaped to England, where, bankrupt and without standing, he began a new career. Living a spartan and frugal life, he studied law and was called to the English bar in 1866. In 1872 he attained the distinguished position of queen's counsel and was recognized as one of the leaders of English law. His book, Law of Sale of Personal Property (1868), was long a standard in England and the United States.

A romantic but tragic marriage doomed Benjamin to much loneliness, since his wife chose to live most of the time in France. He died on May 6, 1884.

Further Reading

For information on Benjamin see Pierce Butler, Judah P. Benjamin (1907); Robert Douthat Meade, Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman (1943); and Frank E. Vandiver, Their Tattered Flags (1970).

Additional Sources

Butler, Pierce, Judah P. Benjamin, New York: Chelsea House, 1980.

Evans, Eli N., Judah P. Benjamin, the Jewish Confederate, New York: Free Press, 1988.

Meade, Robert Douthat, Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate statesman, New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Judah Philip Benjamin was attorney general of the Confederate States of America under President Jefferson Davis. Though described by many as a brilliant, self-made man, he was also characterized as the "dark prince of the Confederacy" in Robert W. Service's poem "John Brown's Body."

Benjamin was born August 6, 1811, on St. Croix Island, in the British West Indies. His parents, Philip Benjamin and Rebecca de Mendes Benjamin, were Sephardic Jews who had immigrated to the West Indies from Spain. Hearing that Jews were tolerated and allowed to prosper in the U.S. Carolinas, the family moved to the United States in 1813, settling in Charleston, South Carolina. Young Benjamin attended the Fayetteville Academy, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and entered Yale in 1825 at the age of fourteen. He was the top student in his class when he was expelled in 1827. He was charged with stealing from a fellow student, but the allegations were never proved. Though Benjamin was not an observant Jew, historians acknowledge that anti-Semitism was probably at the heart of the charges and his dismissal from school.

Following his expulsion, Benjamin moved to New Orleans, where he clerked in a commercial house and studied law until he was admitted to the bar in 1832. (A commercial house of the early 1800s was usually involved in the financial transactions around the movement of goods, i.e., lending, bonding, insuring, fees for transport, rent for storage, and contracts of sales.) While studying, he supplemented his income by giving English lessons to the French Creole aristocracy. One of his pupils, Natalie St. Martin, became his wife in a Roman Catholic ceremony in 1833. Though his wife was extravagant and notoriously promiscuous, Benjamin indulged her. Many of his peers commented that Benjamin's wealth could be attributed more to the demands of his wife than to his personal ambitions. For her, he acquired the Belle Chase sugar plantation and an elegant townhouse on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

His real estate purchases were made possible by a growing and successful law practice. By 1834 he had secured his place in the local legal community through a joint publishing venture with Thomas Slidell. Their Digest of the Reported Decisions of the Superior Court of the Late Territory of Orleans and of the Supreme Court of Louisiana was widely used. Benjamin's national reputation as a lawyer was established by his participation in a case involving the brig Creole. His brief—which reviewed the status of slavery under both international law and U.S. domestic law—was printed as a pamphlet and widely circulated. In this more liberal period of his life, he believed and argued that slavery was against the laws of humans and nature. He would later reverse his position.

Benjamin began his political career in 1842 when he was elected as the Whig candidate to the lower house of the Louisiana Legislature. He attended the Louisiana Constitutional Convention from 1844 to 1845. Benjamin's wife was not supportive of his interest in politics, or tolerant of his absences. In 1845, after eleven years of marriage, she moved to Paris. The couple rarely lived together again as husband and wife, but they never divorced—and Benjamin's lifelong devotion to his wife has been well documented.

After his wife's departure, Benjamin retreated to his plantation, from 1845 to 1848, and began to experiment with sugar chemistry and processing. Ultimately, he lost the plantation when a friend defaulted on a note that Benjamin had signed.

Despite his business reversals, Benjamin had "great dreams about the future development of American commerce" and found himself with a renewed commitment to political service. He shared a growing belief in the South that foreign commerce would strengthen the region and restore the balance of power lost by the Compromise of 1850. In 1852 Benjamin ran as a Whig party candidate for one of Louisiana's U.S. Senate seats.

His successful bid for office made him the nation's first Jewish U.S. senator. Also in 1852, Benjamin was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Millard Fillmore. Preferring to take his seat in the Senate, Benjamin declined Fillmore's offer and thereby missed the opportunity to be the first Jewish Supreme Court justice. Benjamin also turned down an appointment as ambassador to Spain, in 1853. Mindful of the escalating national conflict between North and South, he wanted to stay in the United States. In 1854 he wrote, "[A] gulf … is already opened between the Northern and Southern Whigs. ... God knows what awaits us. The future looks full of gloom to me."

In 1856 Benjamin left the Whig party and joined the more conservative southern Democrats. He was reelected to the Senate and continued to serve Louisiana there until the Civil War. Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Benjamin advised secession; he resigned his Senate seat when Louisiana voted to leave the Union.

Benjamin was named attorney general of the Confederate States of America in early 1861. He served as attorney general until November 21, 1861, when he became secretary of war. He inherited a war department that was disorganized and deeply in debt. Throughout 1862, the Confederacy suffered both human resource and equipment shortages, and severe casualties.

A plan by Benjamin to build troop strength by drafting slaves—with the promise of emancipation for service—was prepared and sent to the Confederate congress. Seeing the initiative as a threat to the principle of slavery, the congress failed to pass the measure. Benjamin was eventually charged with inefficiency, and a motion to remove him from his post was drafted.

President Davis, still confident in Benjamin's abilities, stepped in and appointed him secretary of state on March 18, 1862. Benjamin served in that capacity until the fall of the Confederacy, but he never fully regained his popularity with the Southern people. Viewed in a historical context, Benjamin's service and loy- alty to the Confederacy are extraordinary and commendable—especially in light of the extreme anti-Semitism and hatred that pervaded the South throughout the war years.

After Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, U.S. agents targeted Benjamin for capture because it was assumed, falsely, that he knew the location of large sums of money. After a brief stop in North Carolina, Benjamin headed south to Florida. Garbed as a Frenchman and speaking fluent French, he passed himself off as a journalist, Monsieur Bonfals (which translates as Mr. Good Disguise). Because Benjamin was too fat to ride a horse, he traveled by cart in the company of a former Confederate officer from New Orleans who pretended to be his interpreter.

On May 1, 1865, federal agents increased their efforts to locate all Confederate fugitives, and the New York Times called for Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin, and Confederate secretary of war John C. Breckenridge to die "the most disgraceful death on the gallows." The price on Benjamin's head was $40,000, dead or alive. But by May Benjamin had already made it to Tampa.

With the help of Confederate sympathizers and former Confederate soldiers, Benjamin traveled from Tampa to the Gamble Mansion on Florida's southwest coast. En route, he presented himself as Mr. Howard, a farmer and cattle buyer. With federal troops closing in, he was twice forced to hide in a canebrake near the mansion to avoid capture. Eventually, Benjamin was moved to Sarasota Bay, where he sailed down the coast to Knight's Key with Captain Frederick Tresca, a former blockade runner, and H.A. McLeod, an experienced sailor for hire. The trio reached Knight's Key on July 7, 1865. From there, Benjamin boarded a boat for Bimini, in the Bahamas. After this vessel was shipwrecked, he was rescued and returned to Florida, where he again faced capture by federal agents. Benjamin eventually reached Bimini, and then set sail for England. He arrived in England on August 30, 1865, after almost five months of dangerous and grueling travel.

Without funds, Benjamin made the necessary arrangements to practice law in England. He was admitted to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1866, and he was soon a respected member of the British bar. Most of his cases focused on corporate law. He also wrote about matters pertaining to business and corporate law. His Treatise on the Law and Sale of Personal Property: With Special Reference to the American Decisions and the French Code and Civil Law was published in 1868. Commonly known as Benjamin on Sales, the book was a definitive source on commercial matters on both sides of the Atlantic for the next twenty-five years. In 1872, Benjamin was selected Queen's Counsel. He practiced law in England until 1883, when he retired to France. He is credited with making major contributions to the British Empire's dominance of world trade in the last half of the nineteenth century.

Benjamin died May 6, 1884, in Paris. He was buried at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery under a headstone marked Philippe Benjamin.

Judah P. Benjamin
3rd Confederate States Secretary of State
In office March 18, 1862 – May 10, 1865
President	Jefferson Davis
Preceded by	Robert M.T. Hunter
Succeeded by	Office abolished
2nd Confederate States Secretary of War
In office September 17, 1861 – March 24, 1862
President	Jefferson Davis
Preceded by	Leroy Pope Walker
Succeeded by	George W. Randolph
1st Confederate States Attorney General
In office February 25, 1861 – September 17, 1861
President	Jefferson Davis
Preceded by	Office instituted
Succeeded by	Thomas Bragg
Born	August 6, 1811(1811-08-06) Christiansted, Saint Croix, West Indies
Died	May 6, 1884 (aged 72) Paris, France
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Natalie St. Martin
Children	Ninette Benjamin
Alma mater	Yale College
Profession	Politician, Lawyer
Religion	Jewish

Judah Philip Benjamin (August 6, 1811 – May 6, 1884) was an American politician and lawyer. He was born a British subject in the West Indies, became a citizen of the United States and then the Confederate States of America. After the collapse of the Confederacy, he settled in England and died in France.

Benjamin held the following posts:

• Member of the Louisiana House of Representatives;
• U.S. Senator from Louisiana; and
• Three successive Cabinet posts in the government of the Confederate States of America

He was also a distinguished barrister and Queen's Counsel in the United Kingdom. He was the first Jewish Cabinet-member in a North American government, and the first Jew seriously considered for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court (he declined an offer of nomination twice). He was the either the first or second Jewish U.S. Senator (after David Levy Yulee of Florida who became a Presbyterian).

Contents 1 Family and early life 2 Senator 3 Proud Confederate 4 Flight 5 Exile 6 Appearance in fiction 7 Bibliography 8 References 9 External links

Family and early life

Judah Philip Benjamin was born a British subject in Saint Thomas, during the British occupation of the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands), to Phillip Benjamin, an English Jew, and his wife, Rebecca Mendes, a Portuguese Jew.^[1] He emigrated with his parents to the U.S. several years later and grew up in North and South Carolina. In 1824, his father was one of the founders of the first Reform congregation in the United States, the "Reformed Society of Israelites for Promoting True Principles of Judaism According to Its Purity and Spirit" in Charleston. He attended Fayetteville Academy in North Carolina, and at the age of fourteen he entered Yale Law School, though he left without a degree. In 1832 he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he continued his study of law, was admitted into the bar that same year, and entered private practice as a commercial lawyer.

In 1833 Benjamin made a strategic marriage to Natalie St. Martin, of a prominent New Orleans Creole family. He became a slave owner and established a sugar plantation in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. Plantation and legal practice both prospered. In 1842, his only child, Ninette, was born and in 1847 Natalie took the girl and moved to Paris, where she remained for most of the rest of her life. Benjamin did, however, make a trip each summer to France to see his wife and child.^[2]

In 1842, he was elected to the lower house of the Louisiana State Legislature as a Whig, and in 1845 he served as a member of the state Constitutional Convention. In 1850 he sold his plantation and its 150 slaves.

Judah Philip Benjamin

Senator

By 1852, Benjamin's reputation as an eloquent speaker and subtle legal mind was sufficient to win him selection by the state legislature to the U.S. Senate. The outgoing President, Millard Fillmore of the Whig Party, offered to nominate him to fill a Supreme Court vacancy after the Senate Democrats had defeated Fillmore's other nominees for that post, and the New York Times reported (on February 15, 1853) that "if the President nominates Benjamin, the Democrats are determined to confirm him." However, Benjamin declined to be nominated. He took office as a Senator on March 4, 1853. During his first year as a Senator, he challenged another young Senator, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, to a duel over a perceived insult on the Senate floor; Davis apologized, and the two began a close friendship.

He quickly gained a reputation as a great orator. In 1854 Franklin Pierce offered him nomination to a seat on the Supreme Court, which he again declined. He was a noted advocate of the interests of the South, and his most famous exchange on the Senate floor was related to his religion and the issue of slavery: abolitionist and future Radical Republican Benjamin Wade of Ohio referred to him as "a Hebrew with Egyptian Principles."^[3] The future Confederate replied that, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain."^[4] He was again selected to serve as Senator for the term beginning in 1859, but this time as a Democrat. During the 34th through 36th Congresses he was chairman of the Committee on Private Land Claims. Benjamin resigned his seat on February 4, 1861, after the secession of Louisiana from the Union.

Proud Confederate

The original Confederate Cabinet. L-R: Judah P. Benjamin, Stephen Mallory, Christopher Memminger, Alexander Stephens, LeRoy Pope Walker, Jefferson Davis, John H. Reagan and Robert Toombs.

Davis appointed Benjamin to be the first Attorney General of the Confederacy on February 25, 1861, remarking later that he chose him because he "had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits, and capacity for labor." Benjamin has been often referred to as "the Brains of the Confederacy."^[5]

In September 1861, he became the acting Secretary of War, and in November he was confirmed in the post. He became a lightning-rod for popular discontent with the Confederacy's military situation, and quarrelled with the Confederate Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Stonewall Jackson. This came to a head over the loss of Roanoke Island to the Union "without a fight" in February 1862.

Roanoke's commander, Brig. Gen. Henry A. Wise was in desperate need of reinforcements when he was informed of the imminent Federal attack. He begged for the 13,000 idle men under the control of Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger in nearby Norfolk, Va, but his pleas to Huger and secretary of war Benjamin went unheeded. The heavily outnumbered Confederate force of some 2,500 surrendered and were taken prisoner after losing nearly a hundred of their number — which was incorrectly presented in the South as their having "surrendered without a shot being fired" (See Battle of Roanoke Island).

Judah Philip Benjamin

Cries of indignation and anger were heard throughout the South. Rather than publicly reveal the pressing shortage of military manpower that had led to the decision not to defend Roanoke, Benjamin accepted Congressional censure for the action without protest and resigned. As a reward for his loyalty, Davis appointed him Secretary of State in March 1862.

Benjamin's foremost goal as Secretary of State was to draw the United Kingdom into the war on the side of the Confederacy. In 1864, as the South's military position became increasingly desperate, he came to publicly advocate a plan whereby any slave willing to bear arms for the Confederacy would be emancipated and inducted into the military; this would have the dual effect of removing the greatest obstacle in British public opinion to an alliance with the Confederacy, and would also ease the shortage of soldiers that was crippling the South's military efforts. With Davis' approval, Benjamin proclaimed, "Let us say to every Negro who wishes to go into the ranks, 'Go and fight — you are free." Robert E. Lee came to be a proponent of the scheme as well, but it faced stiff opposition from traditionalists, and was not passed until March, 1865, by which time it was too late to salvage the Southern cause.

He is pictured on the CSA $2.00 bill.

Flight

After Robert E. Lee's surrender, Judah P. Benjamin fled south with Jefferson Davis and the rest of his cabinet, but he left the group shortly before they reached Washington, Georgia, where the last meeting of the Confederate Cabinet was held.^[6] He is reported to have stayed in Ocala, Florida, with Solomon Benjamin, a relative,^[7] before continuing on south to Gamble Mansion in Ellenton, Florida. From there, assisted by William Whitaker and others, he was able to escape by boat to the Bahamas and then to England.^[8] His escape from Florida to England, though, was not without hardship. The small sponge-carrying vessel on which he left Bimini bound for Nassau, exploded on the way and he and the three black crewmen had to be rescued by a British warship. His ship from The Bahamas to England caught fire on the way but managed to make it to port.^[9]

Exile

In the immediate aftermath of the end of the war, Benjamin was rumoured to have masterminded the assassination of Abraham Lincoln through his intelligence apparatus (based out of Montreal, Canada: John Wilkes Booth was purportedly seen several times meeting with Confederate representatives and receiving funds from them). Fearing that he could never receive a fair trial in the atmosphere of the time, he burnt his papers, took refuge at Gamble Plantation in Florida and then fled to England under a false name. Some historians believe that he may have briefly considered joining his brother, Joseph, and Colin J. McRae, the former Confederate Financial Agent in Europe, at New Richmond, British Honduras, in the Confederate settlements in British Honduras.^[10]

Benjamin's grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

In June 1866, he was called to the bar in England, the beginning of a successful and lucrative second career as a barrister. In 1868, he published his Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, which came to be regarded as one of the classics of its field. The work's current edition remains authoritative under the name Benjamin's Sale of Goods. In 1872 he became Queen's Counsel. He died in Paris on May 6, 1884, and was interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Appearance in fiction

In that Benjamin's diplomacy could have allowed for a CSA victory, he sometimes appears in alternate history stories though not always in a flattering light.

Judah P. Benjamin is a major character in the novel Gray Victory by Robert Skimin, taking place in an alternate 1866 where the Confederacy won its independence. In the book, a half caste woman who is a member of a secret abolitionist underground has an affair with Benjamin and eventually assassinates him.

Benjamin, along with other historical figures, is also a character in Harry Turtledove's 1992 alternate history novel The Guns of the South. He also appears in Timeline-191 a series that chronicles a world in which the South won the Civil War. Here it won due to France and Britain's siding with the South as the real Benjamin hoped it would. Ironically, from "our" perspective at least, the Confederacy Judah P. Benjamin created becomes an analog for Nazi Germany by the 1940s that unleashes a "Black holocaust" complete with gas chambers. The Nazi Party analog, the Freedom Party, has as its Hitler's right hand man an anti-Black Jew named Saul Goldman, an analog for Joseph Goebbels.

In the 2004 mockumentary film C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, Benjamin was able to convince France and Britain to side with the Confederacy, which allows the South to win the Civil War. Decades later, the CSA seeks to officially make itself a Christian country, and fictitious political legacy John Fauntroy boasts of getting rid of the Jews. In the present, fictional historian Sherman Hoyle grows serious and recalls in a low serious voice that, on hearing Fauntroy's words, the then-dying Jefferson Davis grabbed him by the collar and said that if it wasn't for a Jew, there would be no CSA. In the movie's present day, Jews still live and are seen with gratitude by at least some Confederates, as it was Benjamin who ensured the existence of a CSA throughout which slavery is still legal. (The CSA also took a stance of neutrality in World War II.) Film director Kevin Willmott commented that yes it is true that blacks and Jews did work together in the Civil Rights movement but that that should not make it seem as if Jews were always friends to blacks.

In a less serious vein, Benjamin was the "detective" in John Dickson Carr's Papa La-Bas, a 1968 mystery novel set in New Orleans in 1858.

Benjamin is a major character in the novels The Butcher's Cleaver (2007), and Death Piled Hard (2009) by W. Patrick Lang. In them, the role of Benjamin as the effective head of civilian Confederate covert operations and intelligence is a central feature of the plot. This interpretation of Benjamin's place in history is based on the historical study, "Come Retribution," a study of the Abraham Lincoln assassination.

Benjamin figures prominently in novelist Dara Horn's short story "Passover in New Orleans" and her novel expanding on it, "All Other Nights" (copyright 2009). The story is a fictitious account of an attempt to assassinate a New Orleans Jewish Confederate official before he can assassinate Lincoln [10]; the novel incorporates the story as the beginning of a tale about Jewish spies for both the Union and the Confederacy, as well as double agents.

Bibliography

American Civil War portal

• Evans, Eli N., Judah Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate, New York: The Free Press, 1988.
• Simmons, Donald C., Confederate Settlements in British Honduras, McFarland and Company Publishers, 2001.

References

1. ^ Florida Atlantic University Judaica Collection biography
2. ^ Lebeson, Anita Libman, Pilgrim People: A History of the Jews in America from 1492 to 1974, New York: Minerva Press, 1975, p. 27
3. ^ Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln The Prairie Years and the War Years, NY, Harcourt Brace and Co., 1956, p. 239
4. ^ Judah Benjamin, The Jewish Confederate, The American Jewish Historical Society - accessed July 23, 2008 (a superior source is required, as the quote is often attributed to UK Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli).
5. ^ Jews in the Civil War, Jewish-American History Documentation Foundation, Inc. (accessed November 21, 2008)
6. ^ Wilkes County, Georgia - The Story of Washington-Wilkes part V
7. ^ Ott, Eloise Robinson, and Chazal, Louis Hickman, Ocali Country, Ocala: Marion Publishers, 1966, p.87
8. ^ Florida State Parks - Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at (Gamble Plantation) State Historic Site
9. ^ Lebeson, Anita Libman, Pilgrim People: A History of the Jews in America from 1492 to 1974, New York: Minerva Press, 1975, p. 275
10. ^ Simmons, Donald C. Condederate Settlements in British Honduras. McFarland and Company Publishers, 2001.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Judah P. Benjamin

• Gamble Plantation Historic State Park
• American Civil War website biography
• Jewish Virtual Library biography
• State historical marker at site of his boyhood home in Wilmington, North Carolina

• Judah P. Benjamin at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

United States Senate
Preceded by Solomon W. Downs	United States Senator (Class 2) from Louisiana March 4, 1853 – February 4, 1861 Served alongside: Pierre Soulé and John Slidell	Succeeded by John S. Harris(1)
Legal offices
Preceded by (none)	Confederate States Attorney General February 25, 1861 – September 17, 1861	Succeeded by Thomas Bragg
Political offices
Preceded by Leroy Pope Walker	Confederate States Secretary of War September 17, 1861 – March 24, 1862	Succeeded by George W. Randolph
Preceded by Robert M.T. Hunter	Confederate States Secretary of State March 18, 1862 – May 10, 1865	Succeeded by (none)
Notes and references
1. Because of Louisiana's secession, the Senate seat was vacant for seven years before Harris succeeded Benjamin.

v • d • e United States Senators from Louisiana Class 2 Destréhan • Posey • Brown • Claiborne • Johnson • Bouligny • Livingston • Waggaman • Nicholas • Barrow • Soulé • Downs • Benjamin • Harris • West • Kellogg • Gibson • Caffery • Foster • Ransdell • H. Long • R.M. Long • Ellender • Edwards • J.B. Johnston • Landrieu Class 3 Magruder • Fromentin • Brown • J.S. Johnston • Porter • Mouton • Conrad • Johnson • Soulé • Slidell • Kellogg • Eustis • Jonas • Eustis • White • Blanchard • McEnery • Thornton • R. Broussard • Guion • Gay • E. Broussard • Overton • Feazel • R.B. Long • Breaux • Vitter

v • d • e Cabinet of President Jefferson Davis (1861-1865) Vice President Alexander H. Stephens (1861-1865) Secretary of State Robert Toombs (1861) • Robert M. T. Hunter (1861-1862) • Judah P. Benjamin (1862-1865) Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Memminger (1861-1864) • George A. Trenholm (1864-1865) • John H. Reagan (1865) Secretary of War Leroy P. Walker (1861) • Judah P. Benjamin (1861-1862) • George W. Randolph (1862) • James A. Seddon (1862-1865) • John C. Breckinridge (1865) Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory (1861-1865) Postmaster General John H. Reagan (1861-1865) Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin (1861) • Thomas Bragg (1861-1862) • Thomas H. Watts (1862-1863) • George Davis (1864-1865)

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