The Birthday of Eternity

Judah Benjamin, died May 6, 1884

After the Civil War, Judah Philip Benjamin fled the United States to avoid treason charges.

From London in late 1865, Benjamin provided considerable financial assistance to several friends in the former Confederacy. Benjamin gave the Jefferson Davis family a gift of $12,000. The gift supported not only the Davis extended family but many of their relatives and friends during the early years of the Reconstruction era.

In England, Benjamin claimed that, having been born on English territory, and never having renounced his citizenship, he remained an Englishman. His parents had been on their way to New Orleans during the War of 1812 when their ship was chased by an English vessel. They put in at the Island of St. Croix, and there, on English soil, Judah P. Benjamin was born. His claim of English citizenship being was allowed.

After a brief probation (to allow him to become familiar with the statute law of Britain) he entered the bar in June 1866, only five months after establishing residence in the country. He began a successful and lucrative second career as a barrister, working in corporate law. He was influential in the commercial law that supported the rise of Great Britain as an imperial power.

In 1872, he became a Queen’s Counsel, practicing with wig and robes in the House of Lords, and appearing in 136 major cases. He was the first Jew, and the only person not born in England, who held that position.

He made only two public statements in nineteen years that concerned the war. The first was a three-paragraph letter to the Times of London in September 1865, just after he arrived in England, protesting the imprisonment of Jefferson Davis. The second was a short letter in 1883 contradicting the charge that millions of dollars in Confederate funds were left in European banks under his control.

He spent a few evenings at dinner with Jefferson Davis when the ex-president visited London five times between 1868 and 1883. Otherwise, he avoided nostalgic encounters with friends from the South. When an 1868 general amnesty made it possible for him to return to America openly, he had no desire to leave England. He never returned to the United States.

Jefferson Davis, about 1888

Gradually slowing due to the effects of excess weight, diabetes, and heart disease, his health problems were worsened by head injuries suffered in an 1881 tram accident. Benjamin retired in 1883 on his doctor's advice. He had earned $720,000 during his nearly two decades at the bar in London.

He moved to Paris, France, where his daughter Ninette and three grandchildren lived.

Benjamin burned his personal papers--some as be escaped from Richmond in 1865, and all of the rest just before he died--and he left only six scraps of paper at his death. He left no articles, essays, or books about his role in the war or any other aspect of it.

He died in Paris on May 6, 1884, at the age of 72.

He was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris under tbe name of "Philippe Benjamin" in the family plot of the Boursignac family, the in-laws of his daughter. Three grandchildren died in childhood and no direct descendants survived.

In 1938, the Paris chapter of tbe Daughters of the Confederacy provided an inscription to identify the man in the grave:

JUDAH PHILIP BENJAMIN

BORN ST. THOMAS WEST INDIES AUGUST 6,1811

DIED IN PARIS MAY 6,1884

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM LOUISIANA

ATTORNEY GENERAL, SECRETARY OF WAR AND

SECRETARY OF STATE OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES

OF AMERICA,

QUEENS COUNSEL, LONDON