Judah P. Benjamin

Benjamin was a supporter of the Whig Party from the time of its formation in the early 1830s. He became increasingly involved in the party, and in 1841 ran unsuccessfully for the New Orleans Board of Aldermen.[18] The following year, he was nominated for the Louisiana House of Representatives. He was elected, though the Democrats alleged fraud: Whig supporters, to obtain the vote at a time when the state had a restrictive property qualification for suffrage, acquired licenses for carriages. A voter did not have to demonstrate that the carriage existed, but his license had to be accepted as evidence of ownership by election officials. The Democratic press blamed Benjamin as the strategist behind this maneuver. In 1844, the legislature voted to hold a constitutional convention, and Benjamin was chosen as a delegate from New Orleans.[19] At the convention, Benjamin successfully opposed counting a slave as three-fifths of a human being for purposes of representation in state elections, as was done in federal elections. His position prevailed, and slaves were not counted at all for electoral purposes in Louisiana state elections. According to Evans, his "tact, courtesy, and ability to find compromises impressed the political elders in all corners of the state".[20]

Rabbi Myron Berman, in his history of Jews in Richmond, describes the attitude of antebellum white Southerners toward Jews:

Hidden beneath the free and easy relationships between Jew and Gentile in the antebellum South was a layer of prejudice that derived from historic anti-Semitism. The obverse of the picture of the Jew as the Biblical patriarch and apostle of freedom was the image of the Judas-traitor and the Shylock-materialist who preyed on the misfortunes of the country. But the high incidence of Jewish assimilation, the availability of the black as a scapegoat for social ills, and the relative absence of crises—economic and otherwise—were factors which repressed, at least temporarily, the latent anti-Jewish feeling in the South.[21]

By the early 1840s, Benjamin was wealthy from his law practice and, with a partner, bought a sugar cane plantation, Bellechasse.[22] This purchase, and the subsequent construction of a grand house there, advanced Benjamin's ambitions; the planter class controlled Louisiana politics and would trust only a man who also owned substantial land and slaves. The Benjamin marriage was by then failing, and he hoped in vain that his wife would be content at the plantation. Benjamin threw his energy into improving Bellechasse, importing new varieties of sugar cane and adopting up-to-date methods and equipment to extract and process the sugar. He purchased 140 slaves to work the plantation, and had a reputation as a humane slaveowner.[23]

Benjamin scaled back his involvement in politics in the late 1840s, distracted by his plantation and law practice.[24] His mother Rebecca, whom he had brought to New Orleans, died in 1847 during a yellow fever epidemic.[25] In 1848, Benjamin was a Whig member of the Electoral College; he voted for fellow Louisiana planter, General Zachary Taylor, who was elected U.S. President.[26] He and other Louisianans accompanied President-elect Taylor to Washington for his inauguration, and Benjamin attended a state dinner given by outgoing president James K. Polk.[27] In 1850, Millard Fillmore, who succeeded Taylor after his death earlier that year, appointed Benjamin as judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He was confirmed by the Senate, but he declined the appointment as the salary of $3,500 was too small.[28] The following year, Benjamin assisted the United States Attorney in New Orleans in prosecuting American adventurers who had tried to spark a rebellion against Spanish rule in Cuba, but two trials both ended in hung juries.[26]

Benjamin became interested in strengthening trade connections between New Orleans and California, and promoted an infrastructure project to build a railroad across the Mexican isthmus near Oaxaca; this would speed passenger traffic and cargo shipments. According to The New York Times, in an 1852 speech to a railroad builders' convention, Benjamin said this trade route "belongs to New Orleans. Its commerce makes empires of the countries to which it flows."[29] Benjamin lobbied fellow lawmakers about the project, gained funds from private New York bankers, and even helped organize construction crews. In private correspondence he warned backers of problems; project workers suffered yellow fever, shipments of construction materials hit rough seas, and actions or inaction by both U.S. and Mexican officials caused delays and increases in construction costs. Backers had invested several hundred thousand dollars by the time the project died after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.[29]

Benjamin, c. 1856

Benjamin spent the summer of 1851 abroad, including a visit to Paris to see Natalie and Ninette. He was still away in October 1851, when the Whigs nominated him for the state Senate. Despite his absence, he was easily elected.[30] When the new legislature met in January 1852, Benjamin emerged as one of the leading Whig candidates for election to the U.S. Senate seat that would become vacant on March 4, 1853. As the Louisiana legislature, responsible for electing the state's senators,[lower-alpha 2] met once in two years under the 1845 constitution, it was not scheduled to meet again before the seat became vacant. Some Whig newspapers thought Benjamin too young and inexperienced at forty, despite his undoubted talent, but the Whig legislative caucus selected him on the second ballot, and he was elected by the two houses over Democrat Solomon W. Downs.[31]

The outgoing president, Fillmore, offered to nominate Benjamin, a fellow Whig, to fill a Supreme Court vacancy after the Senate Democrats had defeated Fillmore's other nominees for the post. The New York Times reported on February 15, 1853, that "if the President nominates Benjamin, the Democrats are determined to confirm him."[32] The new president, Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, also offered Benjamin a place on the Supreme Court. Pierce Butler suggested in his 1908 biography of Benjamin that the newly elected senator likely declined these offers not only because he preferred active politics, but because he could maintain his law practice and substantial income as a senator, but could not as a justice.[33] As an advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court, Benjamin won 13 of his first 18 cases.[34]

Judah Benjamin was sworn in as senator from Louisiana on March 4, 1853, at a brief meeting called just prior to President Pierce's inauguration. These new colleagues included Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, and Sam Houston of Texas. The slavery issue was in a brief remission as much of the country wished to accept the Compromise of 1850 as a final settlement. When the Senate was not in session, Benjamin remained in Washington, D.C., conducting a lucrative practice including many cases before the Supreme Court, then conveniently located in a room of the Capitol. His law partners in New Orleans took care of his firm's affairs there. About this time Benjamin sold his interest in Bellechasse, lacking the time to deal with plantation business.[35]

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".[36] 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.[37] 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.[38] 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.[39]

In early 1854, Senator Douglas introduced his Kansas–Nebraska Bill, calling for popular sovereignty to determine whether the Kansas and 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 Missouri Compromise of 1820. 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,[40] but its passage had drastic political effects, as the differences between North and South that had been thought settled by both the 1820 and 1850 compromises were reopened.[41] 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,[42] but as a member of a legislative minority, he had little influence on legislation, and received no important committee assignments.[43]

In May 1856 Benjamin joined the Democrats, stating they had the principles of the old-time Whig Party.[44] 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.[45]

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".[46] The two men, both ambitious for leadership in the South and the nation, formed a relationship that Evans describes as "respectful but wary".[32] 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.[47]

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".[48] 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.[49]

Benjamin, c. (1860–1865)

Benjamin worked to deny Douglas the 1860 Democratic presidential nomination, feeling he had turned against the South. Douglas contended that although the Supreme Court, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, had stated Congress could not restrict slavery in the territories, the people of each territory could pass legislation to bar it. This position was anathema to the South. Benjamin praised Douglas's opponent in his re-election bid, former US Representative Abraham Lincoln, for at least being true to his principles as an opponent of the expansion of slavery, whereas Benjamin considered Douglas to be a hypocrite. Benjamin was joined in his opposition to Douglas by Senator Davis; the two were so successful that the 1860 convention was not able to nominate anyone and split into Northern and Southern factions. The Northerners backed Douglas while Southern delegates chose Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Despite their agreement in opposing Douglas, Benjamin and Davis differed on some race issues: in May, Benjamin voted for a bill to aid Africans liberated by U.S. naval vessels from illegal slave ships, in order to return them to their native continent from Key West. Davis and many other Southerners opposed the bill.[50][51]

Between June and December 1860 Benjamin was almost entirely absorbed in the case of United States v. Castillero, which was tried in San Francisco during the latter part of that period.[52] The case concerned a land grant by the former Mexican government of California. Castillero had leased part of his land to British mining companies, and when American authorities ruled the grant invalid, they hired Benjamin; he spent four months in San Francisco working on the case.[53][54] The trial began in October, and Benjamin gave an address lasting six days. The local correspondent for The New York Times wrote that Benjamin, "a distinguished stranger", drew the largest crowds to the courtroom and "the Senator is making this terribly tedious case interesting".[55] Once the case was submitted for decision in early November, Benjamin departed for the East. The court's ruling, rendered in January 1861, was substantially for his clients, but not satisfied, they appealed. They lost the case entirely to an adverse decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, three justices dissenting, the following year. Benjamin was by then a Confederate Cabinet officer, and could not argue the case. His co-counsel filed his brief with the court.[56]

By the time Benjamin returned to the east, the Republican candidate, Lincoln, had been elected president, and there was talk, in Louisiana and elsewhere, of secession from the Union. The New Orleans Picayune reported that Benjamin favored secession only in the last resort. On December 23, 1860, another Louisiana periodical, the Delta, printed a letter from Benjamin dated December 8 stating that, as the people of the North were of unalterable hostility to their Southern brethren, the latter should depart from the government common to them. He also signed a joint letter from Southern Representatives to their constituents, urging the formation of a confederation of the seceding states.[57] According to a letter reportedly written by Benjamin during the crisis, he saw secession as a means of obtaining more favorable terms in a reformed Union.[58]

With Southern opinion turning in favor of secession, Benjamin made a farewell speech in the Senate on December 31, 1860, to a packed gallery, desirous of hearing one of the South's most eloquent voices. They were not disappointed; Evans writes that "historians consider Benjamin's farewell ... one of the great speeches in American history."[59] Benjamin foresaw that the South's departure would lead to civil war:

What may be the fate of this horrible contest none can foretell; but this much I will say: the fortunes of war may be adverse to our arms; you may carry desolation into our peaceful land, and with torch and firebrand may set our cities in flames ... you may do all this, and more, but you never can subjugate us; you never can convert the free sons of the soil into vassals, paying tribute to your power; you never can degrade them to a servile and inferior race. Never! Never![59]

According to Geoffrey D. Cunningham in his article on Benjamin's role in secession, "Swept up in the popular cries for independence, Benjamin willingly went out with the Southern tide."[60] He and his Louisiana colleague, John Slidell, resigned from the Senate on February 4, 1861, nine days after their state declared secession.[61]

The original Confederate Cabinet, 1861. L-R: Judah P. Benjamin, Stephen Mallory, Christopher Memminger, Alexander Stephens, LeRoy Pope Walker, Jefferson Davis, John H. Reagan and Robert Toombs.

Fearful of arrest as a rebel once he left the Senate, Benjamin quickly departed Washington for New Orleans. On the day of Benjamin's resignation, the Provisional Confederate States Congress gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, and soon chose Davis as president. Davis was sworn in as provisional Confederate States President on February 18, 1861. At home in New Orleans for, it would prove, the last time, Benjamin addressed a rally on Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1861.[62] On February 25, Davis appointed Benjamin, still in New Orleans, as attorney general; the Louisianan was approved immediately and unanimously by the provisional Congress.[63] Davis thus became the first chief executive in North America to appoint a Jew to his Cabinet.[64]

Davis, in his memoirs, remarked that he chose Benjamin because he "had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits, and capacity for labor".[65] Meade suggested that Davis wanted to have a Louisianan in his Cabinet, but that a smarter course of action would have been to send Benjamin abroad to win over the European governments.[66] Butler called Benjamin's appointment "a waste of good material".[67] Historian William C. Davis, in his volume on the formation of the Confederate government, notes, "For some there was next to nothing to do, none more so than Benjamin."[68] The role of the attorney general in a Confederacy that did not yet have federal courts or marshals was so minimal that initial layouts for the building housing the government in Montgomery allotted no space to the Justice Department.[68]

Meade found the time that Benjamin spent as attorney general to be fruitful, as it allowed him the opportunity to judge Davis's character and to ingratiate himself with the president.[66] Benjamin served as a host, entertaining dignitaries and others Davis had no time to see.[68] At the first Cabinet meeting, Benjamin counseled Davis to have the government buy 150,000 bales of cotton for shipment to the United Kingdom, with the proceeds used to buy arms and for future needs. His advice was not taken, as the Cabinet believed the war would be short and successful.[65] Benjamin was called upon from time to time to render legal opinions, writing on April 1 to assure Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger that lemons and oranges could enter the Confederacy duty-free, but walnuts could not.[69]

Once Virginia joined the Confederacy, the capital was moved to Richmond, though against Benjamin's advice—he believed that the city was too close to the North. Nevertheless, he traveled there with his brother-in-law, Jules St. Martin; the two lived in the same house throughout the war, and Benjamin probably procured the young man's job at the War Department. Although Alabama's Leroy Walker was Secretary of War, Davis—a war hero and former U.S. War Secretary—considered himself more qualified and gave many orders himself. When the Confederates were unable to follow up their victory at the First Battle of Manassas by threatening Washington, Walker was criticized in the press.[70] In September, Walker resigned to join the army as a brigadier general, and Davis appointed Benjamin in his place.[71] Butler wrote that Davis had found the cheerfully competent Benjamin "a most useful member of the official family, and thought him suited for almost any post in it."[72] In addition to his appointment as War Secretary, Benjamin continued to act as Attorney General until November 15, 1861.[73]

As War Secretary, Benjamin was responsible for a territory stretching from Virginia to Texas. It was his job, with Davis looking over his shoulder, to supervise the Confederate Army and to feed, supply, and arm it in a nascent country with almost no arms manufacturers. Accordingly, Benjamin saw his job as closely tied to foreign affairs, as the Confederacy was dependent on imports to supply its troops. Davis had chosen a "defensive war" strategy: the Confederacy would await invasion by the Union and then seek to defeat its armies until Lincoln tired of sending them. Davis and Benjamin worked together closely, and as Davis came to realize that his subordinate was loyal to the Confederacy and to Davis personally, he returned complete trust in Benjamin. Varina Davis wrote, "It was to me a curious spectacle, the steady approximation to a thorough friendliness of the President and his War Minister. It was a very gradual rapprochement, but all the more solid for that reason."[74]

In his months as War Secretary, Benjamin sent thousands of communications.[75] According to Evans, Benjamin initially "turn[ed] prejudice to his favor and play[ed] on the Southerner's instinctive respect for the Jewish mind with a brilliant performance." Nevertheless, Benjamin faced difficulties that he could do little to solve. The Confederacy lacked sufficient soldiers, trained officers to command them, naval and civilian ships, manufacturing capacity to make ships and many weapons, and powder for guns and cannon. The Union had those things and moved to block the South's access to European supplies, both by blockades and by buying up supplies that the South might have secured. Other problems included drunkenness among the men and their officers and uncertainty as to when and where the expected Northern invasion would begin.[76] Also, Benjamin had no experience of the military or of the executive branch of the government, placing him in a poor position to contradict Davis.[77]

An insurgency against the Confederacy developed in staunchly pro-Union East Tennessee in late 1861, and at Davis's order, Benjamin sent troops to crush it. Once it was put down, Benjamin and Davis were in a quandary about what to do about its leader, William "Parson" Brownlow, who had been captured, and eventually allowed him to cross to Union-controlled territory in the hope that it would cause Lincoln to release Confederate prisoners.[79] While Brownlow was in Southern custody, he stated that he expected, "no more mercy from Benjamin than was shown by his illustrious predecessors towards Jesus Christ".[77]

Benjamin had difficulty in managing the Confederacy's generals. He quarreled with General P.G.T. Beauregard, a war hero since his victory at First Manassas. Beauregard sought to add a rocket battery to his command, an action that Benjamin stated was not authorized by law. He was most likely relaying Davis's views, and when challenged by Beauregard, Davis backed Benjamin, advising the general to "dismiss this small matter from your mind. In the hostile masses before you, you have a subject more worthy of your contemplation".[80] In January 1862, Stonewall Jackson's forces had advanced in western Virginia, leaving troops under William W. Loring at the small town of Romney. Distant from Jackson's other forces and ill-supplied, Loring and other officers petitioned the War Department to be recalled, and Benjamin, after consulting Davis, so ordered after he used the pretext of rumored Union troop movements in the area. Jackson complied but, in a letter to Benjamin, asked to be removed from the front or to resign. High-ranking Confederates soothed Jackson into withdrawing his request.[81]

The power of state governments was another flaw in the Confederacy and a problem for Benjamin. Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown repeatedly demanded arms and the return of Georgian troops to defend his state. North Carolina Governor Henry T. Clark also wanted troops returned to him to defend his coastline.[82] After Cape Hatteras, on the North Carolina's coast, was captured, Confederate forces fell back to Roanoke Island. If it fell, a number of ports in that area of the coast would be at risk, and Norfolk, Virginia, might be threatened by land.[83]

General Henry A. Wise, commanding Roanoke, also demanded troops and supplies. He received little from Benjamin's War Department that had no arms to send, as the Union blockade was preventing supplies from being imported. That Confederate armories were empty was a fact not publicly known at the time. Benjamin and Davis hoped that the island's defenses could hold off the Union forces, but an overwhelming number of troops were landed in February 1862 at an undefended point, and the Confederates were quickly defeated.[84] Combined with Union General Ulysses S. Grant's capture of Fort Henry, the site of the Battle of Fort Henry, and Fort Donelson in Tennessee, it was the most severe military blow yet to the Confederacy, and there was a public outcry against Benjamin, led by General Wise.[85]

It was revealed a quarter-century after the war that Benjamin and Davis had agreed for Benjamin to act as a scapegoat, rather than to reveal the shortage of arms.[86] Not knowing it, the Richmond Examiner accused Benjamin of "stupid complacency."[87] Diarist Mary Chestnut recorded that "the mob calls him Mr. Davis's pet Jew."[88] The Wise family never forgave Benjamin, to the detriment of his memory in Southern eyes. Wise's son, Captain Jennings Wise, fell at Roanoke Island, and Henry's grandson John Wise, interviewed in 1936, told Meade that "the fat Jew sitting at his desk" was to blame.[86] Another of the general's sons, also named John Wise, wrote a highly-popular book about the South in the Civil War, The End of an Era (1899) in which he said that Benjamin "had more brains and less heart than any other civic leader in the South.... The Confederacy and its collapse were no more to Judah P. Benjamin than last year's birds nest."[86]

The Confederate States Congress established a special committee to investigate the military losses, and Benjamin testified before it.[89] The Secretary of State, Virginia's Robert M. T. Hunter, had quarreled with Davis and resigned, and in March 1862, Benjamin was appointed as his replacement. Varina Davis noted that some in Congress had sought Benjamin's ouster "because of reverses which no one could have averted, [so] the President promoted him to the State Department with a personal and aggrieved sense of injustice done to the man who had now become his friend and right hand."[90] Richmond diarist Sallie Ann Brock Putnam wrote, "Mr. Benjamin was not forgiven... this act on the part of the President [in promoting Benjamin], in defiance of public opinion, was considered as unwise, arbitrary, and a reckless risking of his reputation and popularity... [Benjamin] was ever afterwards unpopular in the Confederacy, and particularly in Virginia."[91] Despite the promotion, the committee reported that any blame for the defeat at Roanoke Island should attach to Wise's superior, Major General Benjamin Huger, "and the late secretary of war, J.P. Benjamin."[92]

Throughout his time as Secretary of State, Benjamin tried to induce Britain and France to recognize the Confederacy—no other nation was likely to do so unless these powerful states led the way. The protection this would bring to the Confederacy and its foreign trade was hoped to be enough to save it.[93]

Benjamin on the 1864 Confederate $2 banknote.

By the 1850s, cheap Southern cotton fueled the industries of Europe. The mills of Britain, developed during the first half of the 19th century, by 1860 used more cotton than the rest of the industrialized world combined. Cotton imports to Britain came almost entirely from the American South. According to an article in The Economist in 1853, "let any great social or physical convulsion visit the United States, and England would feel the shock from Land's End to John O'Groat's. The lives of nearly two million of our countrymen ... hang upon a thread."[94]

In 1855, an Ohioan, David Christy, published Cotton Is King: or Slavery in the Light of Political Economy. Christy argued that the flow of cotton was so important to the industrialized world that cutting it off would be devastating—not least to the Northern United States, as cotton was by far the largest U.S. export. This became known as the "King Cotton" theory, to which Davis was an enthusiastic subscriber.[95] Benjamin also spoke in favor of the theory, though Butler suspected he may have "known better", based on his firsthand knowledge of Europe.[92]

When war came, Davis, against Benjamin's advice, imposed an embargo on exports of cotton to nations that had not recognized the Confederate government, hoping to force such relations, especially with Britain and France.[96] As the Union was attempting to prevent cotton from being exported from Confederate ports by a blockade and other means, this played to a certain extent into the hands of Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William H. Seward.[97] Additionally, when the war began, Britain had a large surplus of cotton in warehouses, enough to keep the mills running at least part-time for a year or so. Although many prominent Britons believed the South would prevail, there was a reluctance to recognize Richmond until it had gained the military victories to put its foe at bay. Much of this was due to hatred of slavery, though part of it stemmed from a desire to remain on good terms with the U.S. government—due to a drought in 1862, Britain was forced to import large quantities of wheat and flour from the United States.[98] Also, Britain feared the expansionist Americans might invade the vulnerable Canadian colonies, as Seward hinted they might.[99]

Davis appointed Benjamin as Secretary of State on March 17, 1862. He was promptly confirmed by the Confederate Senate. A motion to reconsider the confirmation was lost, 13–8.[100] According to Butler, the appointment of Benjamin brought Davis little political support, as the average white Southerner did not understand Benjamin and somewhat disliked him.[101] As there was not much open opposition to Davis in the South at the time, Benjamin's appointment was not criticized, but was not given much praise either. Meade noted, "the silence of many influential newspapers was ominous. [Benjamin's] promotion in the face of such bitter criticism of his conduct in the war office caused the first serious lack of confidence in the Davis government."[102]

Meade wrote that, since the Secretary of State would have to work closely with Jefferson Davis, Benjamin was likely the person best suited to the position.[102] In addition to his relationship with the President, Benjamin was very close to the Confederate First Lady, Varina Davis, with whom he exchanged confidences regarding war events and the President's health. "Together, and by turns, they could help him over the most difficult days."[103]

For recreation, Benjamin frequented Richmond's gambling dens, playing poker and faro. He was incensed when British correspondent William Howard Russell publicized his gambling, feeling that it was an invasion of his private affairs. He was also displeased that Russell depicted him as a losing gambler, when his reputation was the opposite.[104]

The Trent Affair had taken place before Benjamin took office as Secretary of State: a U.S. warship had in October 1861 removed Confederate diplomats James Mason and James Slidell (Benjamin's former Louisiana colleague in the U.S. Senate) and their private secretaries from a British-flagged vessel. The crisis brought the U.S. and Britain near war, and was resolved by their release.[105] By the time of Benjamin's appointment, Mason and Slidell were at their posts in London and Paris as putative ministers from the Confederacy, seeking recognition by the governments of Britain and France. With difficult communications between the South and Europe (dispatches were often lost or intercepted), Benjamin was initially reluctant to change the instructions given the agents by Secretary Hunter. Communications improved by 1863, with Benjamin ordering that dispatches be sent to Bermuda or the Bahamas, from where they reached the Confederacy by blockade runner.[106]

As a practical matter, Benjamin's chances of gaining European recognition rose and fell with the military fortunes of the Confederacy. When, at the end of June 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee turned back Union General George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign in the Seven Days Battles, ending the immediate threat to Richmond, Emperor Napoleon III of France favorably received proposals from Benjamin, through Slidell, for the French to intervene on the Confederacy's behalf in exchange for trade concessions. Nevertheless, the Emperor proved unwilling to act without Britain.[107] In August 1862, Mason, angered by the refusal of British government ministers to meet with him, threatened to resign his post. Benjamin soothed him, stating that while Mason should not submit to insulting treatment, resignation should not take place without discussion.[108]

The bloody standoff at Antietam in September 1862 that ended Lee's first major incursion into the North gave Lincoln the confidence in Union arms he needed to announce the Emancipation Proclamation.[109] British newspapers mocked Lincoln for hypocrisy in freeing slaves only in Confederate-held areas, where he could exercise no authority. British officials had been shocked by the outcome of Antietam—they had expected Lee to deliver another brilliant victory—and now considered an additional reason for intervening in the conflict. Antietam, the bloodiest day of the war, had been a stalemate; they read this as presaging an overall deadlock in the war, with North and South at each other's throats for years as Britain's mills sat empty and its people starved. France agreed with this assessment.[110]

The final few months of 1862 saw a high water mark for Benjamin's diplomacy.[111] In October, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, expressed confidence in Confederate victory, stating in Newcastle, "There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army. They are making, it appears, a navy, and they have made what is more than either—they have made a nation."[112] Later that month, Napoleon proposed to the British and Russians (a U.S. ally) that they combine to require a six months' armistice for mediation, and an end to the blockade; if they did so, it would likely lead to Southern independence.[113] The proposal divided the British Cabinet. In mid-November, at the urgings of Palmerston and War Secretary George Cornewall Lewis, members decided to continue to wait for the South to defeat Lincoln's forces before recognizing it.[114] Although proponents of intervention were prepared to await another opportunity, growing realization among the British public that the Emancipation Proclamation meant that Union victory would be slavery's end made succoring the South politically infeasible.[115]

Benjamin had not been allowed to offer the inducement for intervention that might have succeeded—abolition of slavery in the Confederacy, and because of that, Meade deemed his diplomacy "seriously, perhaps fatally handicapped".[116] The Secretary of State blamed Napoleon for the failure, believing the Emperor had betrayed the Confederacy to get the ruler the French had installed in Mexico, Maximilian, accepted by the United States.[117]

In Paris, Slidell had been approached by the banking firm Erlanger et Cie. The company offered to float a loan to benefit the Confederacy.[lower-alpha 3] The proposed terms provided a large commission to Erlanger and would entitle the bondholder to cotton at a discounted price once the South won the war.[118] Baron Frederic Emile d'Erlanger, head of the firm, journeyed to Richmond in early 1863, and negotiated with Benjamin, although the transaction properly fell within the jurisdiction of Treasury Secretary Memminger. The banker softened the terms somewhat, though they were still lucrative for his firm. Benjamin felt the deal was worth it, as it would provide the Confederacy with badly needed funds to pay its agents in Europe.[119]

The twin rebel defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in early July 1863 made it unlikely that Britain, or any other nation, would recognize a slaveholding Confederacy staggering towards oblivion.[120] Accordingly, in August, Benjamin wrote to Mason telling him that as Davis believed the British unwilling to recognize the South, he was free to leave the country.[121] In October, with Davis absent on a trip to Tennessee, Benjamin heard that the British consul in Savannah had forbidden British subjects in the Confederate Army from being used against the United States. The Secretary of State convened a Cabinet meeting, that expelled the remaining British consuls in Confederate-controlled territory, then notified Davis by letter. Evans suggests that Benjamin's actions made him the Confederacy's acting president[122]—the first Jewish president.[123]

Benjamin supervised the Confederate Secret Service, responsible for covert operations in the North, and financed former federal Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson to work behind the scenes financing operations that might undermine Lincoln politically. Although efforts were made to boost Peace Democrats, the most prominent actions proved to be the St. Albans Raid (an attack on a Vermont town from Canada) and an unsuccessful attempt to burn New York City.[124] In the aftermath of the war, these activities led to accusations that Benjamin and Davis were involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, as one Confederate courier, John H. Surratt, who had received money from Benjamin, was tried for involvement in the conspiracy, though Surratt was acquitted.[125]

As the Confederacy's military fortunes flagged, there was increasing consideration of what would have been unthinkable in 1861—enlisting male slaves in the army and emancipating them for their service. In August 1863, B. H. Micou, a relative of a former law partner, wrote to Benjamin proposing the use of black soldiers. Benjamin responded that this was not feasible, principally for legal and financial reasons, and that the slaves were performing valuable services for the Confederacy where they were.[126] According to Meade, "Benjamin did not offer any objections to Micou's plan except on practical grounds—he was not repelled by the radical nature of the proposal".[127] A British financial agent for the Confederacy, James Spence, also urged emancipation as a means of gaining British recognition. Benjamin allowed Spence to remain in his position for almost a year despite the differences with Confederate policy, before finally dismissing him in late 1863.[128] Despite official neutrality, tens of thousands from British-ruled Ireland were enlisting in the Union cause; Benjamin sent an agent to Ireland hoping to impede those efforts and Dudley Mann to Rome to urge Pope Pius IX to forbid Catholic Irish from enlisting. The Pope did not do so, though he responded sympathetically.[129]

In January 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne, of the Army of Tennessee, proposed emancipating and arming the slaves. Davis, when he heard of it, turned it down and ordered it kept secret. Evans notes that Benjamin "had been thinking in similar terms for much longer, and perhaps the recommendation of so respected an officer was just the impetus he needed."[130] The year 1864 was a disastrous one for the Confederacy, with Lee forced within siege lines at Petersburg and Union General William T. Sherman sacking Atlanta and devastating Georgia on his march to the sea.[131][132] Benjamin urged Davis to send the secretary's fellow Louisianan, Duncan Kenner, to Paris and London, with an offer of emancipation in exchange for recognition. Davis was only willing to offer gradual emancipation, and both Napoleon and Palmerston rejected the proposal.[133] Benjamin continued to press the matter, addressing a mass meeting in Richmond in February 1865 in support of arming the slaves and emancipating them. A bill eventually emerged from the Confederate Congress in March, but it had many restrictions, and it was too late to affect the outcome of the war.[134]

In January 1865, Lincoln, who had been re-elected the previous November, sent Francis Blair as an emissary to Richmond, hoping to secure reunion without further bloodshed. Both sides agreed to a meeting at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Benjamin drafted vague instructions for the Southern delegation, led by Vice President Alexander Stephens, but Davis insisted on modifying them to refer to North and South as "two nations". This was the point that scuttled the Hampton Roads Conference; Lincoln would not consider the South a separate entity, insisting on union and emancipation.[135]