Judah P. Benjamin: Big Jew of the Confederacy

“Judah Philip Benjamin must be bracketed with Disraeli, who was his contemporary, as the ablest Jewish politician ever born under the British flag. But his career outdid Disraeli’s in audacity. Benjamin lived three lives in one.” 

Judah is a plantation owner, slave-owner and originally a Senator from Louisiana – as was the aforementioned and equally European-connected John Slidell. Although he has no military experience, Benjamin is named the South’s Secretary of War in 1861, after having served as Attorney General for several months. Many in the South will come to loath and mistrust Benjamin.  The great General  Jackson once threatened to resign over conflicts with Benjamin (here) – who was commonly referred to in the South as “Mr. Davis’s pet Jew”. (here)

But certain people in Europe had a much higher opinion of Benjamin. In 1861, Salomon de Rothschild – grandson of dynasty founder Mayer Amschel Rothschild – during a visit to Louisiana describes Benjamin as: “the greatest mind in North America” (here) That pretty much tells us all we need to know about the “southern rebel” Judah Benjamin!

In the fall of 1859,  de Rothschild, the son of Baron James de Rothschild of Paris, had come to the United States as a tourist. His travels in the North and South are recorded in a series of letters to his cousin Nathaniel in London.

JUDAH BENJAMIN’s EUROPEAN PLOT

In 1862, Benjamin, under intense Congressional pressure, is forced to resign as War Secretary. Jefferson Davis then appoints his beleaguered adviser as the South’s Secretary of State! In this position, Benjamin will work with Swindell and Swindell’s French Jewish son-in-Law Erlanger to secure not just financing from the Rothschild syndicate, but also to induce the direct involvement of Rothschild’s Britain & France into the war, on the side of the South.

A joint British & French entry into the war would have tipped the scales in favor of the South, and ultimately led to two American nations, both under foreign influence. Lincoln and his Secretary of State, William Seward block Judah Benjamin’s scheme by turning to Russia for help.

In a clear message to his old Rothschild-funded foes from the Crimean War, Czar Alexander II stations the better part of his Pacific fleet in San Francisco, and a portion of his western fleet in New York. The British & French instigators of the Crimean War get the message and are forced to back off. Judah Benjamin and the Rothschild financiers are thus thwarted. Together, Alex and Abe have defied the London Bankers and will both pay a heavy price for it.

After the war, in recognition of, or payback for, Russia’s help in keeping Britain & France out of the war; Seward will arrange for the purchase of Alaska from Russia after the war “ an act dismissed at the time as “Seward’s Folly”. But now we know the reason for the “folly”.

1- The presence of Russian fleets in San Francisco and New York kept Judah Benjamin’s British and French attack dogs at bay.  

2- Seward’s Folly was Union payback to Russia.

On 16, October 1864 on page 2, The Chicago Tribune reported,

BELMONT’S CONFEDERATE BONDS (Excerpt)

“It is perhaps somewhat flattering to our national pride to know that the Rothschilds, who hold up every despotism in Europe, have concluded that it would be cheaper to buy up one of our political parties (Democrats), and in that way secure the dissolution of the Union, than to have their agents in England and France interfere and fight us.

But Irishmen and Germans have a something, which for brevity we will all a ‘crop,’ and this fact sticks in their crop, that the oppressors of Ireland and Germany, the money kings of Europe, not daring to carry out their first pet project of breaking down this Government by the armed intervention, of England and France.

ALL CONNECTED! 

Slidell “ Erlanger “  Belmont “ Benjamin 

DID JUDAH BENJAMIN KILL LINCOLN?

In the closing days of the American Civil War, a massive conspiracy to decapitate the U.S. government results in the assassination of President Lincoln by an actor with ties to secret societies. John Wilkes Booth shoots Lincoln in the back of the head as Lincoln and his wife watch a play at Ford’s Theatre. Booth escapes.

Vice President Johnson and General Ulysses S Grant were also to have been killed. The “conspiracy theorists” of the day point the finger at Judah Benjamin, (here) who burns the official papers of the Confederate Secret Service right about this time. (here)  Thanks to Bennie the Burner, the full story of Confederate clandestine services, and most likely the Lincoln assassination, may never be known.

1 & 2: Abe and Alex both paid with their lives for defying the Rothschilds. Judah Benjamin was suspected of engineering the Lincoln assassination.

3 – “Extremes Meet” – British Press mocks Abe and Alexander’s cooperation.

Lincoln’s alliance with the Rothschild family’s most hated enemy, Russia, and his printing of interest-free ‘Greenbacks” to finance the war were big “no-no’s” that got him killed. John Fazio’s ‘Decapitating the Union’ supports the belief of many during that time that Judah Benjamin was the mastermind of the plot.

BENJAMIN BUGS OUT

As the south collapses, Benjamin stays in the home of a Jewish merchant in South Carolina while final surrender negotiations drag on. Here, Benjamin abandons President Davis’s plan to fight on, telling him that the cause is hopeless. When negotiations fail, Benjamin remains part of the group around Davis that moves on with the President. 

At one point, Benjamin (under suspicion for involvement in Lincoln’s assassination) tells Davis that he needs to separate from the Presidential party temporarily, and go to the Bahamas to be able to send instructions to foreign agents. He reassures Davis that he will rejoin him in Texas.  According to historian William C. Davis, “the pragmatic Secretary of State almost certainly never had any intention of returning to the South once gone”.  (here)

When he bades Postmaster Reagan goodbye, the Postmaster asks where Benjamin is going. Benjamin replies: “To the farthest place from the United States, if it takes me to the middle of China.” (here)

While other Confederate leaders, including the trusting fool Jefferson Davis, are being jailed and abused, Benjamin arrives in London before traveling to Paris – where his wife and daughter had been sent to live years before the war had even started.  Benjamin then moves back to England and will enjoy a very profitable career and “second life” as an attorney, until his death in 1884. Congressman John Wise, son of Confederate General and Virginia Governor Henry Wise, wrote a highly popular book about the South in the Civil War in 1899, The End of an Era. In it, he stated:

“(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 bird’s nest.” (here)

Unfortunately for historians, and fortunately for the Rothschilds, Benjamin, exactly as he had done with papers pertaining to the Confederacy’s secret services in 1865, also burned his personal papers shortly before his death in 1884.

1 & 2 – John Wise’s ˜End of an Era’ expresses the true Southern feeling toward the fleeing scoundrel Judah Benjamin, to whom the South was like “last year’s bird’s nest.”

3 – After abandoning his Confederate colleagues and the people of the South, Benjamin the “British” Barrister went on to enjoy a hugely successful 2nd career in Rothschild’s London — where he was a contemporary of Karl Marx and Benjamin Disraeli.

Now that you know the story of “The Confederate Kissinger”; the reason his name is so little known should no longer be a mystery.