Judah Benjamin - The Jewish Confederate

[Wild Bill]

Considering that he destroyed most of his personal and political papers, there has been a lot of work done on Benjamin, a testimony to this interesting character and his importance to attempting to achieve Rebel independence. He was the only person to serve in three positions under Jefferson Davis: Attorney General (February 25, 1861), Secretary of War (September 17, 1861), and Secretary of State (February 22, 1862). See Pierce Butler, Judah P. Benjamin (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company, 1906), good for its quotes of old letters and documents; Robert Douthat Meade, Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), which set a new standard for its time; Simon I. Niemon, Judah Benjamin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963); Martin Rywell, Judah Benjamin: Unsung Rebel Prince (Asheville, N.C.: Stephens Press, 1948), short, but poignant; and Eli N. Evans, Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate (New York: The Free Press, 1988), by far the best of the lot, who examines his subject from the viewpoint of being a Jew, a Southerner, an American, and a cosmopolitan citizen of the western world. None of them see Benjamin as a conspirator against Lincoln's person, in any way, shape or form.

There are numerous shorter essays on Benjamin's role in the Confederacy, but the best for our purposes are Hudson Strode, “Judah P. Benjamin’s Loyalty to Jefferson Davis,” Georgia Review, 20 (1966), 251-60, the title of which reveals Benjamin's key to Davis' trust; Robert Douthat Meade, "Judah P. Benjamin," Civil War Times Illustrated, 10 (June 1971), 10-20, a good general survey; Meade, "The Relations between Judah P. Benjamin and Jefferson Davis," Journal of Southern History, 5 (1939), 468-78; and Eli N. Evans, "In Search of Judah P. Benjamin," in Evans, The Lonely Days Were Sundays (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), 17-34, a