If Lincoln had not died

[Linda Anderson]

(01-06-2013 08:20 PM)Thomas Thorne Wrote:  

(01-06-2013 05:31 PM)Linda Anderson Wrote:  

(01-06-2013 01:23 PM)Thomas Thorne Wrote:  .

There are three Jewish justices on the Supreme Court today: Justices Ginsberg, Breyer and Kagan with Kagan being the last justice appointed to the Supreme Court in 2010. I don't know if Jefferson Davis would have needed smelling salts for the three Jewish justices as his Secretary of State, Judah Benjamin, was Jewish.

My goof. What I meant to say was that there were no Protestants on The US Supreme Court.
Tom

No problem, Tom. Thanks for mentioning the make-up of the Supreme Court to begin with. I didn't realize there were no Protestants currently serving on the Court.

Nancy, Betty pointed out that it was Disraeli, not Benjamin, who renounced his Jewish faith to attend college and be elected to Parliament.

I found an article about Benjamin in the Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsou...jamin.html

"After Benjamin resigned as Confederate Secretary of War, Davis appointed him Secretary of State. Eli Evans, Benjamin’s most perceptive biographer, observed that 'Benjamin served Davis as his Sephardic ancestors had served the kings of Europe for hundreds of years, as a kind of court Jew to the Confederacy. An insecure President [Davis] was able to trust him completely because, among other things, no Jew could ever challenge him for leadership of the Confederacy.' Near the end of the war, Benjamin privately persuaded Robert E. Lee and other Confederate military leaders that the South’s best chance was to emancipate any slave who volunteered to fight for the Confederacy. When Benjamin repeated this proposal to an audience of 10,000 persons in Richmond in 1864, his remarks lit a firestorm. Georgian Howell Cobb observed, 'If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.' Benjamin’s idea, however valuable, was rejected as politically impossible. As Evans observes, 'The South chose [instead] to go down in defeat with the institution of slavery intact.'"