Biography of 	Benjamin, Judah Phillips Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by 	Mike Miller September 2000

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Judah Phillips Benjamin was born on the island of Santa Cruz of the West Indies group in 1811
or 1812.  His parents were Hebrews, who resided temporarily there, and in 1815 removed to
Charleston, S. C.  Shortly after, perhaps in 1810, the family settled at New Orleans, where
Judah was educated until 1829, when he was sent to complete his studies in Yale college.  In
1832, on his return to New Orleans, he was admitted to the bar and at once won a high
reputation as a pleader and one which he sustained in presence of such jurists as Taney,
Marshall and Story.  He was elected United States senator in 1852 from Louisiana and re-elected
in 1859.  On the formation of the confederate government, President Davis appointed him to fill
the dual office of attorney-general and acting secretary of war.  In February, 1862, he was
appointed secretary of state and filled that position until the fate of the confederacy was
sealed at Appomattox.  His escape from the country is a romance in itself.  An open boat on the
open sea, buffeted by every wave, gave place to a sloop of nine tons, not much better, and when
this sloop was wrecked on July 14, 1865, a ride of thirty miles in a skiff to the nearest
inhabited point; a rescue by the British yacht "Georgia" and his subsequent voyage to Havana en
route to England, are all matters of history.  In England he was warmly received, but French
civilization brought him ultimately to Paris, where he died in May, l884, a fall from a street
car inducing the illness which led to the disease of a great lawyer and statesman.

Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 470.  Published by the
Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.