Judah P. Benjamin - Wikipedia
Judah Philip Benjamin,
QC (August 11, 1811 – May 6, 1884) was a lawyer and politician who was a
United States Senator from Louisiana, a
Cabinet officer of the Confederate States and, after his escape to the United Kingdom at the end of the
American Civil War, an English
barrister. Benjamin was the first
Jew to be elected to the United States Senate who had not renounced the religion, and the first of that faith to hold a Cabinet position in North America.
Spokesman for slavery[edit]
Benjamin's view that slavery should continue was based in his belief that citizens had a right to their property as guaranteed by the Constitution. As Butler put it, "he could no more see that it was right for Northern people to rob him of his slave than it would be for him to connive at horse stealing".
[35] He avoided the arguments of some that the slaves were inferior beings, and that their position was ordained by God: Evans ascribes this to Benjamin not being raised as a slaveowner, but coming to it later in life.
[36] Benjamin joined in a widespread view of white Southerners that the African American would not be ready for
emancipation for many years, if ever. They feared that freeing the slaves would ruin many and lead to murders and rapes by the newly liberated of their former masters and mistresses. Such a massacre had been feared by Southerners since the
Haitian Revolution, the violent revolt known as "Santo Domingo" in the South, in which the slaves of what became Haiti killed many whites and
mulattoes in 1804 while gaining independence from French control.
[37] When the anti-slavery book
Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852, Benjamin spoke out against
Harriet Beecher Stowe's portrayal. He said that slaves were for the most part well treated, and plantation punishments, such as whipping or branding, were more merciful than sentences of imprisonment that a white man might receive in the North for similar conduct.
[38]
In early 1854, Senator Douglas introduced his
Kansas–Nebraska Bill, calling for
popular sovereignty to determine whether the
Kansasand
Nebraska territories should enter the Union as slave or free states. Depending on the outcome of such elections, slavery might spread to territories closed to it under the Compromise of 1850. In the debate over the bill, Benjamin defended this change as returning to "the traditions of the fathers", that the federal government not legislate on the subject of slavery. He said that the South merely wished to be left alone. The bill passed,
[39] but its passage had drastic political effects, as the differences between North and South that had been settled by the Compromise were reopened.
[40] The Whig Party was torn apart North from South, with many Northern Whigs joining the new
Republican Party, a group pledged to oppose the spread of slavery. Benjamin continued to caucus with the remains of the Whig Party through 1854 and 1855,
[41] but as a member of a legislative minority, he had little influence on legislation, and received no important committee assignments.
[42]
In May 1856, Benjamin joined the Democrats, stating they had the principles of the old-time Whig Party.
[43] He indicated, in a letter to constituents, that as Northern Whigs had failed to vote to uphold the rights granted to Southern states in the Constitution, the Whigs, as a national party, were no more.
[44]
At a state dinner given by Pierce, Benjamin first met
Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, whose wife
Varina described the Louisiana senator as having "rather the air of a witty bon vivant than of a great senator".
[45] The two men, both ambitious for leadership in the South and the nation, formed a relationship that Evans describes as "respectful but wary".
[31] The two had occasional differences; when in 1858, Davis, by then a Mississippi senator, was irritated by Benjamin's questioning him on a military bill and suggested that Benjamin was acting as a paid attorney, the Louisianan challenged him to a duel. Davis apologized.
[46]
Benjamin, in his speeches in the Senate, took the position that the Union was a compact by the states from which any of them could secede. Nevertheless, he understood that any dissolution would not be peaceful, stating in 1856 that "dreadful will be the internecine war that must ensue".
[47] In 1859, Benjamin was elected to a second term, but allegations of involvement in land scandals and the fact that upstate legislators objected to both of Louisiana's senators being from New Orleans stretched the contest to 42 ballots before he prevailed.
[48]
True story, I was in the process of converting to Judaism, but backed out.
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" are the same places that post about David Rockefeller being on his 9th heart transplant 
