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Judah Philip Benjamin, QC (August 11, 1811 – May 6, 1884) was a lawyer and politician who was a United States Senator from Louisiana, a Cabinet officer of the Confederate States and, after his escape to the United Kingdom at the end of the American Civil War, an English barrister. Benjamin was the first Jew to be elected to the United States Senate who had not renounced the religion, and the first of that faith to hold a Cabinet position in North America. Benjamin was born to Sephardic Jewish parents from London, who had moved to St. Croix in the Danish West Indies when it was occupied by Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. Seeking greater opportunities, his family emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Charleston, South Carolina. Benjamin attended Yale College but left without graduating and moved to New Orleans, where he read law and passed the bar. Benjamin rose rapidly both at the bar and in politics. He became a wealthy slaveowner and served in both houses of the Louisiana legislature prior to his election to the Senate in 1852 There, he was an eloquent supporter of slavery, and resigned as senator after Louisiana left the Union in early 1861. He returned to New Orleans, but soon left when Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him Attorney General. Benjamin had little to do in that position, but Davis was impressed by his competence and appointed him Secretary of War. Benjamin firmly supported Davis, and the President reciprocated the loyalty by promoting him to Secretary of State in March 1862 while Benjamin was being criticized for the rebel defeat at the Battle of Roanoke Island. As Secretary of State, Benjamin attempted to gain official recognition for the Confederacy by France and the United Kingdom, but his efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. To preserve the Confederacy as military defeat made its situation increasingly desperate, he advocated freeing and arming the slaves, but his proposals were not accepted until it was too late. When Davis fled the Confederate capital of Richmond in early 1865, Benjamin went with but left the presidential party and was successful in escaping, whereas Davis was captured by Union troops. Benjamin made his way to Britain and became a barrister, again rising to the top of his profession before retiring in 1883. He died in Paris the following year. == Early and personal life == Judah Philip Benjamin was born on August 11, 1811, in St. Croix of the Danish West Indies (today the United States Virgin Islands), a colony then occupied by the British during the Napoleonic Wars. His parents were Sephardic Jews, Philip Benjamin and the former Rebecca de Mendes. Philip and Rebecca had been shopkeepers in London, and emigrated to the West Indies in search of better opportunities. Rebecca's family had been prominent in Spain before being forced to leave under the Expulsion Edict of 1492.〔 Judah, the third of seven children, was given the same name as an older brother who died in infancy. Following a tradition adhered to by some Sephardi, he was named for his paternal grandfather, who performed the ''brit milah'', or circumcision ceremony. The Benjamins encountered hard times in the Danish West Indies, as normal trade was blocked by the British occupation. In 1813 the Benjamin family moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where they had relatives. Philip Benjamin was not financially successful there, and around 1821 moved with his family to Charleston, South Carolina. That city had the largest Jewish community in the United States and a reputation for religious tolerance. Philip was learned in his faith but was again unsuccessful in business; Rebecca earned money for the family by operating a fruit stand near the harbor. Judah and two siblings were boarded with relatives in Fayetteville for about 18 months after the rest of the family moved to Charleston. He attended the Fayetteville Academy, a well-regarded school where his intelligence was recognized. In Charleston, his father was among the founders of the first Reform congregation in the United States, with shorter services conducted in English rather than Hebrew. Philip was ultimately expelled from that community, as he did not keep the Sabbath, and the extent of Judah's religious education is uncertain. The boy's intelligence was noted by others in Charleston, one of whom offered to finance his education. At the age of 14, in 1825, Benjamin entered Yale College, an institution popular among white Southerners; Vice President John C. Calhoun, a South Carolinian, was among its alumni. Although Benjamin was successful as a student at Yale, he left abruptly in 1827 without completing his course of study. The reasons for this are uncertain: in 1861, when Louisiana left the Union and Benjamin resigned as a U.S. senator, an abolitionist newspaper alleged that he had been caught as a thief at Yale. He considered bringing suit for libel but litigation was impractical. In 1901, his sole surviving classmate wrote that Benjamin had been expelled for gambling. One of his biographers, Robert Meade, considered the evidence of wrongdoing by Benjamin to be "too strong to be ignored", but noted that at the time Benjamin left Yale, he was only 16 years old. After a brief return to Charleston, Benjamin moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. According to Rabbi Bernard W. Korn's volume on that city's Jews, he "arrived in New Orleans in 1828, with no visible assets other than the wit, charm, omnivorous mind and boundless energy with which he would find his place in the sun". After working in a mercantile business, he became a clerk for a law firm, where he began to read law, studying as an apprentice. Knowledge of French was important in practicing law in Louisiana, as the state's code is and was based on French and Spanish law. To earn money, he tutored French Creoles in English; he taught the language to Natalie Bauché de St. Martin on the condition that she teach him French. In late 1832, at age 21, he was admitted to the bar. Early the following year, Benjamin married Natalie, who was Catholic and from a wealthy French Creole family. As part of her dowry, she brought with her $3,000 and two female slaves, aged 11 and 16 (together worth about $1,000). Even before the marriage, Natalie St. Martin had scandalized New Orleans society by her conduct, and William De Ville, in his journal article on the Benjamin marriage contract, suggests that the "St. Martin family was not terribly distraught to be rid of their young daughter" and that "Benjamin was virtually suborned to marry (), and did so without hesitation in order to further his ambitions". The marriage was not a success. By the 1840s, Natalie Benjamin was living in Paris with the couple's only child, Ninette, whom she raised as a Catholic. Benjamin would visit them annually. While a senator, in the late 1850s he persuaded Natalie to rejoin him and expensively furnished a home in Washington for all three to live in. Natalie and their daughter soon embarked again for France. Benjamin, publicly humiliated by his failure to keep Natalie, consigned the household goods to auction. There were rumors, never substantiated, both that Benjamin was impotent, and that Natalie was unfaithful. Benjamin's troubled married life has led to speculation that he was gay. Daniel Brook, in a 2012 article about Benjamin, suggests that early biographies read as though "historians are presenting him as an almost farcically stereotypical gay man and yet wear such impervious heteronormative blinders that they themselves know not what they write". These conjectures were not given scholarly weight until 2001, when in an introduction to a reprinting of Meade's biography of Benjamin, Civil War historian William C. Davis acknowledged "cloaked suggestions that he () was a homosexual".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Judah P. Benjamin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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