Judah P. Benjamin

Judah Philip Benjamin (1811 to 1884) was a lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Louisiana, a member of the Confederate States cabinet and, after his escape to Britain at the end of the American Civil War, an English barrister. Born on St. Croix in the Danish West Indies to Sephardic Jewish parents and raised in Charleston, he left Yale without a degree, moved to New Orleans, read law and was admitted to the bar in 1832. He argued his first case before the Supreme Court of Louisiana within months of admission, compiled with Thomas Slidell a digest of the reported decisions of the Louisiana courts, served in both houses of the Louisiana legislature and was elected to the Senate in 1852. He was the first Jew to hold a cabinet post in North America. In the Confederacy Jefferson Davis made him Attorney General, then Secretary of War, and in March 1862 Secretary of State, and after fleeing to Britain he rose to the top of the English bar before retiring in 1883.