Judah P. Benjamin
by: Nathan Weissler

“Judah P. Benjamin achieved greater political power than any other Jew in the nineteenth century--perhaps even in all American history,” Eli Evans, biographer of Judah Benjamin wrote. Indeed, Judah Phillip Benjamin was the highest-ranking Jew in the Confederate government during the American Civil War. He served as Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State. Prior to the war, he was one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He was even offered a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court by then-President Millard Fillmore which he declined. To this day, Benjamin remains the only American Jew to appear on a piece of U.S. currency--the Confederate two-dollar bill.

Benjamin was born a British subject in the British West Indies on August 6, 1811. Benjamin was descended by Sephardic Jews who were from Spain originally. Benjamin was raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where his parents immigrated in his early childhood. As of 1800, Charleston had the largest Jewish community in the country. Benjamin’s father was one of the founders of the first Reform synagogue in the United States which was in Charleston.

Benjamin entered Yale Law School at age fourteen but left under circumstances which remain unknown to the present day. He then settled in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1832. In 1833, Benjamin married Natalie St. Martin, whose parents were prominent members of the New Orleans Catholic Community. They had one child together-- a daughter whom they named Ninette. The Benjamin marriage was unhappy and Natalie took their daughter to live in Paris in 1847. Though legally married, Benjamin and Natalie lived apart for a majority of their married life.

At about this time, Benjamin became increasingly active in Louisiana politics. In 1842, Benjamin defended insurance companies who were being sued by slave-owners to recover the cost of slaves who died in an uprising at sea. This was needless to say ironic for a future leader of the Confederacy. In the same year-- 1842--Benjamin was elected to the Louisiana State Legislature as a Whig. In 1845, he served as a delegate to the Louisiana State Constitutional Convention

In 1852, Benjamin was elected to the U.S. Senate from Louisiana. Benjamin experienced significant anti-Semitism in his rise to power. Upon the election of Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s sixteenth President in 1860, eleven Southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. On February 4, 1861, after Louisiana joined the Confederacy, Benjamin resigned his seat in the Senate.

Later that month, the new Confederate President Jefferson Davis-- appointed Benjamin Attorney General of the Confederacy. Benjamin would go on to serve as Secretary of War and Secretary of State. Benjamin has been called “the brains of the Confederacy” throughout history. Indeed, Davis’ wife Varina recollected that Benjamin spent twelve hours on a daily basis with her husband.

After the Civil War ended in 1865 in the South’s defeat, Benjamin fled to England where he became a wealthy lawyer and Queen’s Counsel. Over the years, Benjamin had to deal with allegations that he had helped plot the 1865 assassination of President Lincoln. He ultimately settled in Paris where he died on May 6, 1884. He was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

For more information, access an online biography on Benjamin on the website of the American Jewish Historical Society: here