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Product Identifiers

PublisherYale University Press

ISBN-100300229267

ISBN-139780300229264

eBay Product ID (ePID)18050032709

Product Key Features

Book TitleJudah Benjamin : Counselor to the Confederacy

Number of Pages200 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2021

TopicUnited States / 19th Century, Religious, Political, United States / General

IllustratorYes

GenreBiography & Autobiography, History

AuthorJames Traub

Book SeriesJewish Lives Ser.

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight11.7 Oz

Item Length8.7 in

Item Width7.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2020-939635

Reviews"A cogent argument for acknowledging, rather than ignoring, Benjamin's role in both Jewish and American history."--Diane Cole, Wall Street Journal "This new biography complicates the legacy of Benjamin, a 19th-century New Orleans lawyer and one of the first Jewish senators in America, who used his nimble legal mind to defend slavery and the Confederacy."-- New York Times Book Review "James Traub elaborates the unexpected life of Judah Benjamin, who advanced the slaveholder's cause from beginning to end, as both understandable and purposefully obscured. Absolutely fascinating!"--Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People "This is, by far, the best and most readable, short biography of Benjamin that exists."--Jonathan Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History, "A cogent argument for acknowledging, rather than ignoring, Benjamin's role in both Jewish and American history."--Diane Cole, Wall Street Journal "This new biography complicates the legacy of Benjamin, a 19th-century New Orleans lawyer and one of the first Jewish senators in America, who used his nimble legal mind to defend slavery and the Confederacy."-- New York Times Book Review "Lively, well-written, and engaging."--Paul Finkelman, Jewish Review of Books "James Traub elaborates the unexpected life of Judah Benjamin, who advanced the slaveholder's cause from beginning to end, as both understandable and purposefully obscured. Absolutely fascinating!"--Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People "This is, by far, the best and most readable, short biography of Benjamin that exists."--Jonathan Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History, "James Traub elaborates the unexpected life of Judah Benjamin, who advanced the slaveholder's cause from beginning to end, as both understandable and purposefully obscured. Absolutely fascinating!"--Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People "This is, by far, the best and most readable, short biography of Benjamin that exists."--Jonathan Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History

Dewey Edition23

Dewey Decimal973.713092

SynopsisA moral examination of Judah Benjamin--one of the first Jewish senators, confidante to Jefferson Davis, and champion of the cause of slavery "This new biography complicates the legacy of Benjamin . . . who used his nimble legal mind to defend slavery and the Confederacy."-- New York Times Book Review "A cogent argument for acknowledging, rather than ignoring, Benjamin's role in both Jewish and American history."--Diane Cole, Wall Street Journal Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884) was a brilliant and successful lawyer in New Orleans, and one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He then served in the Confederacy as secretary of war and secretary of state, becoming the confidant and alter ego of Jefferson Davis. In this new biography, author James Traub grapples with the difficult truth that Benjamin, who was considered one of the greatest legal minds in the United States, was a slave owner who deployed his oratorical skills in defense of slavery. How could a man as gifted as Benjamin, knowing that virtually all serious thinkers outside the American South regarded slavery as the most abhorrent of practices, not see that he was complicit with evil? This biography makes a serious moral argument both about Jews who assimilated to Southern society by embracing slave culture and about Benjamin himself, a man of great resourcefulness and resilience who would not, or could not, question the practice on which his own success, and that of the South, was founded., Judah Benjamin was the most politically powerful, and arguably the most important, American Jew of the nineteenth century. He was also the most widely hated one, not only in the North but in portions of the South. Benjamin does not deserve our admiration; but like some other figures who have yoked their lives to deplorable causes, he nevertheless deserves our attention. Benjamin was an immigrant striver, like Alexander Hamilton, born like Hamilton in the West Indies and raised in poverty. And he was a Jew in a country where Jews did not occupy important public positions. Yet he shot to the highest levels of law and politics through the sheer force of his brilliance, charm, and bottomless capacity for work. Under other circumstances we would regard Benjamin as an exemplar of the American art of assimilation; but it was to the South, and to the culture of slaverv. that he assimilated. Book jacket., A moral examination of one of the first Jewish senators, confidante to Jefferson Davis, and champion of the cause of slavery

LC Classification NumberE467.1.B4