(Judah P. Benjamin). The African Slave Trade.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

C. Sherman & Son

Philadelphia, 1863

1863

Sabin, 81812; unknown to E. N. Evans, Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate (1988)

This pamphlet presents the intercepted correspondence between Judah P. Benjamin, secretary of state for the Confederacy, and L.Q.C. Lamar, the Confederate minister to Russia. The confederacy was at that time trying to secure recognition from the European powers and Benjamin instructed Lamar in the letter to resist signing any treaty that would obligate the South to outlaw the international slave trade. (Benjamin argued that the Confederate Constitution denies the federal government the power to make treaties on such a subject and that it is a right reserved for each individual state.) Benjamin’s letter is followed by editorials from the National Intelligencer, a Washington, D.C. newspaper, attesting to the authenticity of the letters and assuring readers that the ultimate goal of the Confederate rebellion was to revive the international slave trade. The present copy contains the printed wrappers, which is important since the text continues onto the recto and verso of the rear wrapper. Judah P. Benjamin (1811-84) was the most prominent American Jew in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. America’s most famous lawyer, he later became the first Jewish cabinet member in the New World by serving as the attorney general, secretary of war and, finally, the secretary of state for the Confederacy. Benjamin is remembered as Jefferson Davis’s closest confidant.