Judah Philip Benjamin

Judah Philip Benjamin, surely one of the most controversial figures in the annals of American Jewry, was portrayed in his lifetime in strikingly contrary tones — as both the “brains of the Confederacy” and the cause of the South’s defeat, as a brilliant intellect and as a conniving crook. The eldest son Philip Benjamin and Rebecca de Mendes, Benjamin was born on the island of St. Croix, in the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands). Two years after his birth, the family sailed for the United States, settling in Charleston, where Philip Benjamin set up a fruit shop in 1821.

The Benjamin family struggled financially, and young Judah, precocious and ambitious, served as a source of hope for his parents. At age 14, he traveled north to study law at Yale, where he distinguished himself academically. In his four semesters there, Benjamin twice had the highest average in his class, and twice tied with another student for that distinction. He was known for his eloquence and wit, and played an active role in campus debate clubs, earning the Berkeley Prize for academic achievement. Then, after just two years, Benjamin left Yale under mysterious circumstances that would spark extensive public speculation and rumor in later years.

Three years later, Benjamin arrived in New Orleans. There, he worked a series of jobs before finally landing a position as assistant to a notary, essential training to follow his dream of becoming a lawyer. He also began giving English lessons to Natalie St. Martin, the daughter of an insurance official from the city’s Creole elite. They married in 1833, a social coup for the status-conscious Benjamin. Though his religion was problematic for the St. Martins, Benjamin declined to convert; nevertheless, he agreed to raise their children as Catholics. The marriage would prove to be a difficult one for a variety of reasons. Loneliness, for Natalie, would be the price of her husband’s ambitions.

In addition to working contracts and petty cases, Benjamin dedicated himself to composing a book on Louisiana law. Coauthored with Tom Slidell, the future chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, this work analyzed over 6,000 cases and soon emerged as a standard legal text, helping advance Benjamin’s career. As his legal reputation grew, he found himself increasingly involved in local politics.

By the 1840s, success permitted Benjamin to acquire Belle Chasse, a plantation located to the south of New Orleans. The purchase had a dual purpose— it both gave Benjamin the respectable status of a “gentleman farmer,” which was considered essential for a career in Louisiana politics, and it removed Natalie from New Orleans society, where her infidelities had become notorious. Belle Chasse pioneered sugar production in Louisiana, and Benjamin had the “distinction” of owning 140 slaves. However, he was often gone from home, dedicating himself thoroughly to his legal practice. Natalie’s feelings of abandonment, isolation and depression grew, even after their daughter Ninette was born in 1843. The following year she announced her intention to leave Louisiana altogether and settle in Paris.

Benjamin won his first race for public office in 1842, securing a seat in the Louisiana state legislature. A decade later he was elected to the U.S. Senate, the first professing Jew to serve in that body (though David Levy Yulee, who was born Jewish, had represented Florida as U.S. Senator from 1845 to 1851, Yulee was a convert to Christianity who denied ever having been Jewish). In the fall of 1852, at the same time Benjamin won his Senate seat, President, Fillmore offered Benjamin a seat on the Supreme Court. Benjamin turned down the nomination, and his subsequent Congressional career was a dazzling one.

In the Senate, Benjamin was known for his oratorical prowess. “Benjamin was collected and self-possessed in debates,” remarked Representative J.L.M. Curry, “did not use notes and had a memory like Macaulay’s.” He was perhaps the most eloquent defender of Southern interests, and quickly developed a close association with fellow southerner Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a relationship that would prove decisive for both men. A famous story has Benjamin responding to an anti-Semitic comment on the floor of the Senate by saying, “It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate hand of the Deity, amidst the thunderings and lightings of Mount Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain.”

Natalie Benjamin returned from France to accompany her husband to Washington upon his election to a second term in 1858. They set up house with plans for extensive entertaining, including lavish balls. However, rumors followed Natalie to the capital. As one Washington society lady described it, “Mrs. Benjamin was very gay and very happy. My father and mother condemned her strongly because of the treatment of her husband. [Benjamin] idolized her and gave her everything she wanted. I do not think he knew what was going on. It came as a terrible shock to him.” Eventually, she departed again for Paris, this time for good. Benjamin would visit her there once a year.

Meanwhile, the course of American politics was growing more and more tumultuous. The threat to the integrity of the Union became viable when South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860. As late as December 11, 1860, the New Orleans Picayune reported, “Benjamin opposes secession, except in last resort.” However, sectional tensions soon boiled over. On New Years Eve, Benjamin delivered his farewell speech to the Senate. As Varina Davis wrote, “his voice rose over the vast audience distinct and clear…he held his audience spellbound for over an hour and so still were they that a whisper could have been heard.” Before an overflowing gallery, Benjamin warned:

What may be the fate of this horrible contest no man can tell…but this much I will say: the fortunes of war may be adverse to our arms, you may carry desolation into our peaceful land, and with torch and fire you may set our cities in flame… you may do all this—and more too, if more there be—but you never can subjugate us; you never can convert the free sons of the soil into vassals, paying tribute to your power; and you never, never can degrade them to the level of an inferior and servile race. Never! Never!

The speech drew reactions as fiercely divergent as the political and ethical convictions of the times. Louisiana seceded on January 26, 1861, and on February 4, Benjamin officially withdrew from the Senate.

As a prominent figure in the secession drama, Benjamin found himself the object of extensive national attention. His departure from Yale suddenly became the focus of public debate when an article in the Independent, an abolitionist newspaper, written by a former Yale classmate, claimed that Benjamin had been forced out after stealing from other students, while the New Orleans Delta came to Benjamin’s defense. Benjamin’s religion became another point seized on by many infuriated northerners. The Boston Transcript published an article entitled “The Children of Israel,” which impugned the loyalty of American Jews, pointing to the support of secession by Benjamin and other Southern Jews. Republican Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, future Vice President under Ulysses S. Grant, said of Benjamin that, “his heart was in this foul wicked plot to dismember the Union, to overthrow the government of his adopted country which gives equality of rights even to that race that stoned prophets and crucified the Redeemer of the world.”

In February 1861, Benjamin was appointed Attorney General by Jefferson Davis under the provisional government of the Confederate States in February 1861. Six months later, he was appointed Acting Secretary of War, replacing the inept Leroy Walker. Early Confederate victories were a cause of great joy for Benjamin, but he soon found himself in conflict with some of the generals and governors as things turned sour for the South. In the end, Benjamin fared little better than his predecessor, and he resigned in February 1862 to take up the post of Secretary of State.

In his new post, Benjamin became obsessed with trying to lure France and Britain into the war. Though unsuccessful in that effort, Benjamin was able to secure loans from France. Meanwhile, Benjamin was subjected to anti-Semitic attacks in both the South and the North.

During the final days of the Confederacy, Benjamin introduced the idea of using slaves as soldiers. This suggestion elicited a furious response from the Confederate Congress, as it undermined the logic behind the principle Southern defense of slavery. When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln in 1865, Davis and Benjamin were suspected of having plotted the act and, while the martyred Lincoln was compared to Christ in the Northern press, Benjamin was pilloried as Judas. With the South’s ultimate defeat, Benjamin fled to England, fearing that he could never receive a fair trial for Lincoln’s murder.

Upon arriving in London, Benjamin briefly studied English law and was admitted to the bar in 1866. He made a new career as a barrister, published a classic treatise on contracts, and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1872. Now estranged from his wife, Benjamin died alone in England. His daughter, Ninette arranged to have him buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Until 1938, when the Paris chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy provided an inscription with his American name, his simple tombstone was marked only “Philippe Benjamin.”

Judah Philip Benjamin

1859