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Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate
Traces the life of Benjamin, the first Jewish U.S. Senator, and the Confederate Secretary of State, and describes his exile in England
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 8, 2017
Excellent book. While I am fascinated I am not sympathetic. The War of the Rebellion was an extremely complicated series of events. A few things come to bear upon reading this well-written biography;
1. Jefferson Davis was a crackpot.
2.The War of the Rebellion was about the right to own Human Beings. Period. End of revisionist debate.
3.That great minds, and talented statesman are capable of historical mistakes of epic proportions.
4.This war changed American History. It should not be sanitized or revised.We are an imperfect people- but we live in ONE country.
5. Robt E. Lee was a tactical genius who fought extremely well, but on the wrong side of history.
1. Jefferson Davis was a crackpot.
2.The War of the Rebellion was about the right to own Human Beings. Period. End of revisionist debate.
3.That great minds, and talented statesman are capable of historical mistakes of epic proportions.
4.This war changed American History. It should not be sanitized or revised.We are an imperfect people- but we live in ONE country.
5. Robt E. Lee was a tactical genius who fought extremely well, but on the wrong side of history.
June 9, 2019
Before Oscar Straus became Secretary of Commerce and Labor in the Theodore Roosevelt administration another Jew had been named to the Cabinet of another president who's administration
was recognized by 11 breakaway states. Judah P. Benjamin was Jefferson Davis's go to guy and he
held 3 different Cabinet positions in the Confederate government. A talented man also an unhappy
man in many ways. He was typical of the stock character of the wandering Jew.
Benjamin was born in the Danish West Indies, the Virgin Islands and his family were traders and
merchants. Bad times drove them to Charleston, South Carolina where he spent a lot of his adolescence. Charleston had the largest Jewish community in the South and Benjamin lived. Like
many southerners including the region's political leader Benjamin went to Yale but never finished as
he was expelled. Years later friends confided it was for gambling.
Obvious comparisons are usually made between that other son of Israel who was on the political
scene in his country Benjamin Disraeli. But they went about things differently. Disraeli made a
nominal conversion to the Church of England, Benjamin never abandoned his faith despite the
fact it might have made things easier. Disraeli also made a very happy marriage to a much older
woman. Benjamin had a most unhappy marriage to a New Orleans member of Creole society there
and he had a daughter he must have wondered if it was his. Natalie Bauche Benjamin paraded her
infidelities in public and for most of the marriage they lived apart.
It was New Orleans that Benjamin settled in and became rich as both lawyer and planter of sugar
cane. He never expressed any qualms about slavery, he owned over a 100 slaves at one time. He
also had a political career under the tutelage of John Slidell who as an emigre from New York bought Tammany Hall like methods to the Big Easy. Benjamin served in both houses of the
Louisiana state legislature and in 1853 he joined Slidell in the US Senate.
It was in the Senate he made the acquaintance of the Secretary of War Jefferson Davis who after the
Pierce administration joined Benjamin as the Senator from neighboring Mississippi. Whatever
else Davis was he was not an anti-Semite as even among southerners the snide remarks could be
heard.
So when Davis formed his Confederate government and had to reshuffle it many times Benjamin
became indispensable to him. In his last job directing foreign policy his chief mission was to obtain recognition which never came from any foreign power. He also directed spy activities for
the Confederacy. The cloak and dagger aspects of that job was grist for anti-Semitism especially
after Lincoln's assassination. Benjamin's private CIA had some peripheral connection to some of
those in the Lincoln assassination. Tenuous may have been the connection, but it was a good thing
he probably was able to sneak out of the hemisphere and over to Great Britain.
Where in a few years after mastering their legal system Benjamin became wealthy again as a high
priced barrister. He lived until 1882 and died in Paris.
A fascinating and troubled man Benjamin is certainly the prototype of the wandering Jew who
always feels like a guest in someone else's country.
was recognized by 11 breakaway states. Judah P. Benjamin was Jefferson Davis's go to guy and he
held 3 different Cabinet positions in the Confederate government. A talented man also an unhappy
man in many ways. He was typical of the stock character of the wandering Jew.
Benjamin was born in the Danish West Indies, the Virgin Islands and his family were traders and
merchants. Bad times drove them to Charleston, South Carolina where he spent a lot of his adolescence. Charleston had the largest Jewish community in the South and Benjamin lived. Like
many southerners including the region's political leader Benjamin went to Yale but never finished as
he was expelled. Years later friends confided it was for gambling.
Obvious comparisons are usually made between that other son of Israel who was on the political
scene in his country Benjamin Disraeli. But they went about things differently. Disraeli made a
nominal conversion to the Church of England, Benjamin never abandoned his faith despite the
fact it might have made things easier. Disraeli also made a very happy marriage to a much older
woman. Benjamin had a most unhappy marriage to a New Orleans member of Creole society there
and he had a daughter he must have wondered if it was his. Natalie Bauche Benjamin paraded her
infidelities in public and for most of the marriage they lived apart.
It was New Orleans that Benjamin settled in and became rich as both lawyer and planter of sugar
cane. He never expressed any qualms about slavery, he owned over a 100 slaves at one time. He
also had a political career under the tutelage of John Slidell who as an emigre from New York bought Tammany Hall like methods to the Big Easy. Benjamin served in both houses of the
Louisiana state legislature and in 1853 he joined Slidell in the US Senate.
It was in the Senate he made the acquaintance of the Secretary of War Jefferson Davis who after the
Pierce administration joined Benjamin as the Senator from neighboring Mississippi. Whatever
else Davis was he was not an anti-Semite as even among southerners the snide remarks could be
heard.
So when Davis formed his Confederate government and had to reshuffle it many times Benjamin
became indispensable to him. In his last job directing foreign policy his chief mission was to obtain recognition which never came from any foreign power. He also directed spy activities for
the Confederacy. The cloak and dagger aspects of that job was grist for anti-Semitism especially
after Lincoln's assassination. Benjamin's private CIA had some peripheral connection to some of
those in the Lincoln assassination. Tenuous may have been the connection, but it was a good thing
he probably was able to sneak out of the hemisphere and over to Great Britain.
Where in a few years after mastering their legal system Benjamin became wealthy again as a high
priced barrister. He lived until 1882 and died in Paris.
A fascinating and troubled man Benjamin is certainly the prototype of the wandering Jew who
always feels like a guest in someone else's country.
March 3, 2023
I owe the discovery of this book to serendipity, as it is the result of browsing the used book shop at the public library in downtown Asheville, NC, which is just down the street from one of my favorite book stores, Malaprop’s, and which is well worth the visit to anyone with an interest in military history, as it is obvious a war buff died and his estate unloaded a fine collection onto the library shop.
As to Benjamin, I’ve long known of him as a war-long member of the Confederate cabinet, but would probably never have pursued any additional information on my own, so I am glad to have had the book jump into my hands, as it were, because it is a relatively well-balanced, well-written biography. When I say “relatively,” I mean that it contains a little too much breathless Confederate hero worship for my Tennessee scalawag tastes. Why, for example, spend so much time on Stonewall Jackson (especially the drawn-out grieving over his death) when he is entirely tangential to the story? Another peculiar aspect of the book is that Evans decided to make it a quasi-parallel biography of Benjamin and Jefferson Davis. This seems to me to be a questionable editorial decision. There are advantages in that it helps to heighten the stark contrast in talent and temperament between the two men and to inform the unique, courtier’s closeness that Benjamin had with Davis’s wife Varina, but on the other hand it drags in more Davis baggage than a Benjamin biography needs and winds up padding the book.
That said, author Evans limns a penetrating and memorable portrait of Benjamin, a brilliant lawyer as well a fascinating character who was recognized by many contemporaries, North and South, as having the sharpest mind in the Confederacy. The breadth of his legal knowledge was such that, after the war, he absconded to Great Britain where in just a few years he was a top barrister pleading in the House of Lords.
Evans is also excellent on the subject of Benjamin’s Jewishness — non-observant and probably secular, he married a Catholic woman but did not assimilate into Christianity — and on the virulent, American anti-semitism that snarled at his steps even if it did not prevent his political ascent to the US Senate (from Louisiana) and to the Confederate cabinet. The electoral component is probably best explained by the narrowness of the path to the senate, since at the time election was by the state legislature, where Benjamin’s political-machine allegiance and anti-democratic Whiggery could run a manageable deck (he was also apparently a sharp poker player).
The best reason to read a book like this, in my mind, is that it uses the words of the history makers themselves to explain their actions. In the case of the Civil War, this has the salutary effect of clarifying that the purpose of the Confederacy was to establish a republic the sine qua non of which was African-American slavery.
Two examples:
1. Benjamin’s farewell address to the US Senate, as he prepared to leave for his breakaway republic. It was in terms of public awareness a high point of his career. Varina Davis wrote that “he held his audience spellbound for over an hour.” His words foreshadow the future intransigence of the South in regards to the status of it African-Americans: “[T]he 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 … 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!”
2. It is widespread among Neo-Confederates these days to claim that thousands of African-Americans fought as soldiers for the Confederacy. This book reveals that notion to be poppycock. As the war rather quickly revealed the huge disparity in military manpower available to the two contenders, and as the downward curve for the Confederacy became more acute after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Benjamin himself began surreptitiously and objectively to consider how black men might help fill the gap. His first step was to develop — as a lawyer might — a brief outlining the pros and cons of the various ways of accomplishing it. Buy them? No, then we’d have to sell them again (“odious”) or free them (“to the great detriment of the country”). Hire them? No, because “negro men command readily $30 a month all through Virginia … and what would be the effect on the poorer classes of whites in the army, if informed the negroes were paid $30 a month, while the white man receives only $11.” Use them as a local militia? No, it’d be too easy for them to desert en masse. No, best stay where we are by using them for labor, rather than “imitate our enemies by using them in military organizations.”
As the war continued and things got worse and worse, Benjamin — as Secretary of State — began to consider last-ditch, desperate measures to bring Great Britain and France in on the side of the Confederacy. This would require —particularly in the case of Britain — emancipation. If the North won, slavery was done for anyway (the Emancipation Proclamation preparing the way), and depending on the details, the South might gain some wiggle room as to the timing and the eventual breadth of the action. Of Benjamin’s conjectures at the time, Evans writes that he “knew that neither Jefferson Davis nor the Congress would even consider emancipation unless it looked like the only way to avoid defeat, Even then, Benjamin wasn’t sure that they would not rather lose the war.” [p. 263]
Finally, as it happened, they would rather lose the war. Even though the Confederate Congress finally passed a “negro enlistment bill,” it was too little (there was a numerical cap, the men had to be volunteers allowed to join by their masters, and there was no mention of emancipation), too late (a month before the final fall of the Confederacy).
Black soldiery of a scale to make a difference was simply unacceptable, and Evans gives voice to the Confederates explaining why:
Howell Cobb, former Governor of Georgia: “Use all the Negroes you can get, for the purpose for which you need — but don’t arm them. The day you make soldiers out of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”
Robert Toombs, also of Georgia, and one of the Confederacy’s fireating apologists: “[T]he worst calamity that could befall us would be to gain our independence by the valor of our slaves. … The day that the army of Virginia allows a Negro regiment to enter their lines as soldiers they will be degraded, ruined, and disgraced.”
Benjamin himself lent some credence to the notion that the introduction of black soldiers would be fatal to the Confederate army. In a letter to Robert E. Lee — who desperately needed men for the defense of Richmond — Benjamin weighed the pros and cons in a lawyerly way and allowed as how “opponents of the measure are producing a strong impression against it by asserting it would disband the army by reason of the violent aversion of troops to have Negroes in the field with them.”
Not that Union soldiers did not have that violent aversion as well. But it didn’t matter. What the army wanted, the army got. It seems ironic that, in a supposedly “free” democratic republic, such an inherently dictatorial institution as the army should be the vehicle first for introducing African-American soldiers, and then, almost 100 years later, for integrating the rank and file before any similar, civil action of a national scale.
As to Benjamin, I’ve long known of him as a war-long member of the Confederate cabinet, but would probably never have pursued any additional information on my own, so I am glad to have had the book jump into my hands, as it were, because it is a relatively well-balanced, well-written biography. When I say “relatively,” I mean that it contains a little too much breathless Confederate hero worship for my Tennessee scalawag tastes. Why, for example, spend so much time on Stonewall Jackson (especially the drawn-out grieving over his death) when he is entirely tangential to the story? Another peculiar aspect of the book is that Evans decided to make it a quasi-parallel biography of Benjamin and Jefferson Davis. This seems to me to be a questionable editorial decision. There are advantages in that it helps to heighten the stark contrast in talent and temperament between the two men and to inform the unique, courtier’s closeness that Benjamin had with Davis’s wife Varina, but on the other hand it drags in more Davis baggage than a Benjamin biography needs and winds up padding the book.
That said, author Evans limns a penetrating and memorable portrait of Benjamin, a brilliant lawyer as well a fascinating character who was recognized by many contemporaries, North and South, as having the sharpest mind in the Confederacy. The breadth of his legal knowledge was such that, after the war, he absconded to Great Britain where in just a few years he was a top barrister pleading in the House of Lords.
Evans is also excellent on the subject of Benjamin’s Jewishness — non-observant and probably secular, he married a Catholic woman but did not assimilate into Christianity — and on the virulent, American anti-semitism that snarled at his steps even if it did not prevent his political ascent to the US Senate (from Louisiana) and to the Confederate cabinet. The electoral component is probably best explained by the narrowness of the path to the senate, since at the time election was by the state legislature, where Benjamin’s political-machine allegiance and anti-democratic Whiggery could run a manageable deck (he was also apparently a sharp poker player).
The best reason to read a book like this, in my mind, is that it uses the words of the history makers themselves to explain their actions. In the case of the Civil War, this has the salutary effect of clarifying that the purpose of the Confederacy was to establish a republic the sine qua non of which was African-American slavery.
Two examples:
1. Benjamin’s farewell address to the US Senate, as he prepared to leave for his breakaway republic. It was in terms of public awareness a high point of his career. Varina Davis wrote that “he held his audience spellbound for over an hour.” His words foreshadow the future intransigence of the South in regards to the status of it African-Americans: “[T]he 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 … 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!”
2. It is widespread among Neo-Confederates these days to claim that thousands of African-Americans fought as soldiers for the Confederacy. This book reveals that notion to be poppycock. As the war rather quickly revealed the huge disparity in military manpower available to the two contenders, and as the downward curve for the Confederacy became more acute after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Benjamin himself began surreptitiously and objectively to consider how black men might help fill the gap. His first step was to develop — as a lawyer might — a brief outlining the pros and cons of the various ways of accomplishing it. Buy them? No, then we’d have to sell them again (“odious”) or free them (“to the great detriment of the country”). Hire them? No, because “negro men command readily $30 a month all through Virginia … and what would be the effect on the poorer classes of whites in the army, if informed the negroes were paid $30 a month, while the white man receives only $11.” Use them as a local militia? No, it’d be too easy for them to desert en masse. No, best stay where we are by using them for labor, rather than “imitate our enemies by using them in military organizations.”
As the war continued and things got worse and worse, Benjamin — as Secretary of State — began to consider last-ditch, desperate measures to bring Great Britain and France in on the side of the Confederacy. This would require —particularly in the case of Britain — emancipation. If the North won, slavery was done for anyway (the Emancipation Proclamation preparing the way), and depending on the details, the South might gain some wiggle room as to the timing and the eventual breadth of the action. Of Benjamin’s conjectures at the time, Evans writes that he “knew that neither Jefferson Davis nor the Congress would even consider emancipation unless it looked like the only way to avoid defeat, Even then, Benjamin wasn’t sure that they would not rather lose the war.” [p. 263]
Finally, as it happened, they would rather lose the war. Even though the Confederate Congress finally passed a “negro enlistment bill,” it was too little (there was a numerical cap, the men had to be volunteers allowed to join by their masters, and there was no mention of emancipation), too late (a month before the final fall of the Confederacy).
Black soldiery of a scale to make a difference was simply unacceptable, and Evans gives voice to the Confederates explaining why:
Howell Cobb, former Governor of Georgia: “Use all the Negroes you can get, for the purpose for which you need — but don’t arm them. The day you make soldiers out of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”
Robert Toombs, also of Georgia, and one of the Confederacy’s fireating apologists: “[T]he worst calamity that could befall us would be to gain our independence by the valor of our slaves. … The day that the army of Virginia allows a Negro regiment to enter their lines as soldiers they will be degraded, ruined, and disgraced.”
Benjamin himself lent some credence to the notion that the introduction of black soldiers would be fatal to the Confederate army. In a letter to Robert E. Lee — who desperately needed men for the defense of Richmond — Benjamin weighed the pros and cons in a lawyerly way and allowed as how “opponents of the measure are producing a strong impression against it by asserting it would disband the army by reason of the violent aversion of troops to have Negroes in the field with them.”
Not that Union soldiers did not have that violent aversion as well. But it didn’t matter. What the army wanted, the army got. It seems ironic that, in a supposedly “free” democratic republic, such an inherently dictatorial institution as the army should be the vehicle first for introducing African-American soldiers, and then, almost 100 years later, for integrating the rank and file before any similar, civil action of a national scale.
October 12, 2022
A light and breezy biography of a fascinating man, still as of 2022 the most politically successful Jew in American history. Benjamin though is shrouded in mystery. There are few letters and no diary nor memoir. He led a private life despite public tumults and scandals. Evans pays close attention to his status as a Jew and personal relationships but less so his actions in the Confederate government. Indeed, the telling of the war is error prone and Evans is clumsy when writing about slaves and Creoles. As such its a good if imperfect biography and free of showing too much love for its subject, being more interested in the enigma of his life.
July 20, 2011
In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, I decided to read this bio about Judah Benjamin, a Confederate Jew, who served as Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State to the Confederacy. He was basically Jefferson Davis's right hand man. And what an amazing man he was. I really enjoyed this book. I learned a lot about the Civil War and this fascinating man who eventually left the South, moved to England and became a British Barrister. Quite the life this man had!
September 6, 2019
Benjamin obviously deserves more credit than he gets from Confederate historians but his destruction of most of his papers have made studying him a difficult task. Eli Evans has taken on this task and has done a masterful job. This book is an even more spectacular achievement when one considers that Benjamin took deliberate steps to avoid having his biography written. Any student of the Confederacy needs a copy of this book in their library. Also, anyone interested in Jewish-American history will find this book a must read despite Benjamin's tendency to not practice his religion by among other things, having a smokehouse full of delicious hams.
May 19, 2021
Absolutely incredible read for anyone looking to get a more vivid understanding of the personal life of Judah Benjamin, and especially his friendship with President Jefferson Davis. This book is as much of a biography of President Jefferson Davis as it is of Judah Benjamin. After reading this entire book through, I must say, it is truly movie worthy in my opinion.
June 17, 2019
An interesting biography about an enigmatic figure, Evans is a talented writer, but frankly long-winded. Evans' thesis is that Judah P. Benjamin's essential "otherness" as a Jew in the race-conscious and deeply religious Confederacy constantly informed the decisions he made politically.
May 29, 2021
This is a well-written biography about a complex individual.
May 10, 2015
Interesting book about an interesting man. I can't call it earth-shaking. I can say that it makes accessible the "whys" of a life that's full of them: why was this bright, Jewish guy who knew the evil of slavery among the leaders of those who fought to preserve it; why was the most eloquent member of southern leadership silent publicly throughout the war, except for his public call for Confederate emancipation and the arming of slaves willing to fight for the cause; why was he willing and able to escape when his fellow leadership of the rebellion were not; why his post-war silence in the face of calumny; why his closeness to his "President" during the war and his distance from that "President" after it; why his anonymous burial in a goyish cemetery in a city where he knew next to no one?
So I recommend the book as a window and an answer and a reminder that not all the great American success stories end in America or on decent terms with America. And as a marker and reminder of the first, great Jewish statesman to arise in America, even if he did so live his life as to be remembered in this country, when at all, as a disgrace. Hey, history isn't always fair, not even to the industrious, the far-sighted, the entrepreneurial, and the smart who seek to make things better and more just...
So I recommend the book as a window and an answer and a reminder that not all the great American success stories end in America or on decent terms with America. And as a marker and reminder of the first, great Jewish statesman to arise in America, even if he did so live his life as to be remembered in this country, when at all, as a disgrace. Hey, history isn't always fair, not even to the industrious, the far-sighted, the entrepreneurial, and the smart who seek to make things better and more just...
April 10, 2015
Normally when I study the Confederacy, I focus on the military aspects, and I've let the governmental affairs take a back seat. This has clearly been a mistake and a major hole in my studies, as I had completely overlooked this behind-the-scenes master, the brilliant orator and propagandist (used as a positive in this context), and loyal companion. This was as much a biography of a time and culture as it was of a man.
This was quite a time investment; reading at least a chapter most nights, it still took me close to a month to get through. But it was worth every minute; it gave me a new depth of understanding of the Richmond government and Jeff and Varina Davis, as well as a closer look at Southern civilian culture. Jefferson Davis in particular emerged in a much kinder light than he normally does, battling physical and mental illness (much like his counterpart in the North), a man of complex depths. This is the history that got swept under the rug with the cottage industry of painting the Confederacy as the minions of hell with Jeff Davis as the head demon. You still aren't going to agree with their choices, but it's worth the read to see why they made them.
This was quite a time investment; reading at least a chapter most nights, it still took me close to a month to get through. But it was worth every minute; it gave me a new depth of understanding of the Richmond government and Jeff and Varina Davis, as well as a closer look at Southern civilian culture. Jefferson Davis in particular emerged in a much kinder light than he normally does, battling physical and mental illness (much like his counterpart in the North), a man of complex depths. This is the history that got swept under the rug with the cottage industry of painting the Confederacy as the minions of hell with Jeff Davis as the head demon. You still aren't going to agree with their choices, but it's worth the read to see why they made them.
February 7, 2016
This book is a fascinating look at a unique American character, Mr. Benjamin, and his role in the CSA. Benjamin was not only the first Jewish member of Congress but also played several important roles in the Confederacy when his home state of Louisiana seceded. As Attorney-General he provided first-class legal advice to the fledgling CSA. As Secretary of War he managed as much as anyone could of the rebel's war effort. As Secretary of State he ran the Confederate Secret Service and plotted ways to draw in France and England into the war on the Confederacy's side.
This is a very thorough book. It is SO thorough that it has much to do with Jefferson Davis and the plot to kill Lincoln. It does go on at parts but it's worth it for the insights into the running of the Confederacy.
This is a very thorough book. It is SO thorough that it has much to do with Jefferson Davis and the plot to kill Lincoln. It does go on at parts but it's worth it for the insights into the running of the Confederacy.
September 7, 2013
This isn't a bad book. It's competently written. I was disappointed, though, in the flimsiness of the Civil War portions of the text, almost none of which was new to me. The author explains near the end that Benjamin went to some lengths to hide his own war record and that shows. You can still tell that Benjamin was an amazing character, but I wish that the remarkable story of the Jewish Confederate Secretary of War and State who escaped to become a major British jurist came through a little more vividly.
July 13, 2012
Combining two of my favorite interests: The Civil War and Jewish History the book was fascinating on multiple levels. It gave a view of a leader of the CSA and how his life was influenced by his Jewish background (though it seemed to be less and less in his later years/the end of the book). Overall, good read for those interested in either Civil War history or about a Jewish individual who raised to high prominence in 19th century America.
May 10, 2015
Slow moving at times, it follows the rise of the obscure yet influential Confederate. His organizational & political skills are reprised in his post-war reinvention of himself as an barrister in Victorian England.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews