Judah P. Benjamin was born in 1811 on St. Croix in the Danish West Indies to Sephardic Jewish parents and raised mainly in the Carolinas. He entered Yale at 14 and left at 16 amid unproven rumors, arriving in New Orleans in 1828 with no money. He traded English lessons for French lessons, learned Louisiana’s civil law, and married his pupil, Natalie St. Martin, from a wealthy Creole family; she spent most of her life in Paris. He bought the Bellechasse sugar plantation and became a wealthy enslaver. In the 1842 Creole insurance case he argued that enslaved people had a natural desire for liberty, a brief abolitionists reprinted, then served as a U.S. senator from Louisiana from 1853 to 1861 defending slavery as a property right.

Jefferson Davis made him the first Confederate attorney general, then secretary of war and secretary of state. After the fall of Roanoke Island in 1862, he took public blame rather than reveal that there was no powder to send. In 1864 he proposed freeing and arming enslaved men to win European recognition. After Richmond fell he split from Davis and escaped to England, arriving in August 1865 at 54. He enrolled at Lincoln’s Inn, became a Queen’s Counsel, and died in Paris in 1884.

• He was the first Jewish person to hold a cabinet post in North America and was called the brains of the Confederacy.
• He endured anti-Semitic attacks while shielding Davis over Roanoke, and Davis promoted him.
• He fled disguised as a Frenchman who spoke no English and later posed as a cook on a blockade runner.
• One boat carrying him exploded and a ship bound for England caught fire.
• His Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, known as Benjamin on Sales, became a classic, and he burned his papers before he died.