–becomes Security of State of the CSA (Confederate States of America)
He was an American politician and lawyer. Benjamin held the following positions:
– Member of the Louisiana House of Representatives;
– US Senator from Louisiana;
– Three successive Cabinet posts in the government of the Confederate States of America
Judah Benjamin was born in Saint Thomas as a British subject during the British occupation of the Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands). (b. August 6, 1811; d. May 6, 1884), to an English Jew, Phillip Benjamin, and, a Portuguese Jewess, his wife, Rebecca Mendes. All three emigrated to the US in North and South Carolina. His father was one of the founders of the first Reform congregation in the United States in 1824 – the “Reformed Society of Israelites for Promoting True Principles of Judaism According to Its Purity and Spirit” in Charleston.
He attended Fayetteville Academy in North Carolina, and he entered Yale Law School at 14. Benjamin also gathered a reputation as a great debater. Benjamin declined an offer by Franklin Pierce to sit on the Supreme Court in 1854.
Midway through a debate on slavery, Judah was accused for being an “Israelite in Egyptian clothing” by Radical Republican Benjamin Wade of Ohio. Benjamin reply was, “It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightning of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain.”
(Author – With fairness to Wade, his “Israelite” remark was not pejorative, but political.)