Judah P. Benjamin Marker, Fayetteville, NC
Posted by: 
showbizkid
N 35° 03.275 W 078° 52.642
17S E 693580 N 3881156
Judah Philip Benjamin served in three successive cabinet posts in the government of the Confederate States of America. He was the first Jew to serve in the cabinet of a North American government. Benjamin is sometimes called "The Jewish Confederate." He was a student at Fayetteville Academy prior to Yale Law School.
Waymark Code: WME98
Location: North Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 06/05/2006
Views: 32
One of the most misunderstood figures in American Jewish history is Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884), whom some historians have called "the brains of the Confederacy," even as others tried to blame him for the South’s defeat. Born in the West Indies in 1811 to observant Jewish parents, Benjamin was raised in Charleston, South Carolina. A brilliant child, he attended Fayetteville Academy and then, at age 14, he attended Yale Law School. He practiced law in New Orleans. A founder of the Illinois Central Railroad, a state legislator, a planter who owned 140 slaves until he sold his plantation in 1850, Judah Benjamin was elected to the United States Senate from Louisiana in 1852.
When the southern states seceded in 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him Attorney General, making Benjamin the first Jew to hold a Cabinet-level office in an American government and the only Confederate Cabinet member who did not own slaves. Benjamin later served as the Confederacy’s Secretary of War and then as Secretary of State.
Following the Civil War, Benjamin moved to Great Britain and was admitted to the bar in 1866. In London, he practiced law and received the appointment of Queen’s counsel in 1872. He retired in 1883 from active practice and public life. Benjamin moved to Paris, France, and died there May 6, 1884.
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