Benjamin, Judah Phillips

Submitted by Mike Miller

Judah Phillips Benjamin was born on the island of Santa Cruz of the West Indies group in 1811 or 1812. His parents were Hebrews, who resided temporarily there, and in 1815 removed to Charleston, S. C. Shortly after, perhaps in 1810, the family settled at New Orleans, where Judah was educated until 1829, when he was sent to complete his studies in Yale college. In 1832, on his return to New Orleans, he was admitted to the bar and at once won a high reputation as a pleader and one which he sustained in presence of such jurists as Taney, Marshall and Story. He was elected United States senator in 1852 from Louisiana and re-elected in 1859. On the formation of the confederate government, President Davis appointed him to fill the dual office of attorney-general and acting secretary of war. In February, 1862, he was appointed secretary of state and filled that position until the fate of the confederacy was sealed at Appomattox. His escape from the country is a romance in itself. An open boat on the open sea, buffeted by every wave, gave place to a sloop of nine tons, not much better, and when this sloop was wrecked on July 14, 1865, a ride of thirty miles in a skiff to the nearest inhabited point; a rescue by the British yacht "Georgia" and his subsequent voyage to Havana en route to England, are all matters of history. In England he was warmly received, but French civilization brought him ultimately to Paris, where he died in May, l884, a fall from a street car inducing the illness which led to the disease of a great lawyer and statesman.

Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 470. Published by the Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.