Books: Rebel Disraeli

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JUDAH P. BENJAMIN—Robert Douthat Meade—Oxford ($3.75).

The man whom Abraham Lincoln called the smartest of the Confederate civil leaders is no more familiar to most U.S. readers than Felix Kirk Zollicoffer.* Yet Judah Philip Benjamin was one of the most astonishing figures in U.S. history. This week, 59 years after his death, he got a full-length biography.

Most men are satisfied with one career. Judah Benjamin had five. Before he died at the age of 72 he had been 1) a great U.S. lawyer; 2) a railroad promoter; 3) a U.S. Senator; 4) Confederate Cabinet officer and Jefferson Davis' right-hand man through the Civil War; 5) a great lawyer in Great Britain. The careers are as neatly divided as the acts of a well-made play.

Disorderly Teetotaler. Like his contemporary, Benjamin Disraeli, Judah P. Benjamin was a sephardic (of Spanish-Jewish ancestry) Jew. Born in 1811 at Saint Croix, Virgin Islands, he became a U.S. citizen when his drygoods-vending father was naturalized at Charleston, S.C. At 14, Judah was the youngest man in his class at Yale, and a member of the teetotaling Philencratian Society. At 16, Judah was bluntly bounced out of Yale. Probable reasons: "association with a set of disorderly fellows who were addicted to card playing and gambling," theft, mysterious temptations "which he had not the moral force to resist." Judah went to New Orleans to make his fortune.

Work Horse. New Orleans proved less seductive than New Haven. Judah got a job with a notary, studied law in his spare time. Admitted to the bar, he promptly married Natalie St. Martin, a Creole girl with "the voice of a prima donna." She liked parties in the Vieux Carré. Judah preferred to work like a horse. When Natalie left him to live in Paris, he worked harder than ever.

Work soon brought him an annual income of $50,000, leadership of the Louisiana Whigs, practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, a huge plantation mansion. When Judah was not busily promoting railroads or flourishing what his opponents called his "oily, plausible pertinacity" in courtrooms, he was trying to raise the best sugar in Louisiana. For recreation, Benjamin would recite from memory "a wonderful stock" of verses (he was a passionate admirer of Tennyson), play whist, harpoon devilfish. His appreciation of good food and drink was vast.

Bon Vivant. Benjamin was the first Jew ever offered an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He turned it down to become a U.S. Senator (from Louisiana). In an age of eloquence, Benjamin was eloquent too. Many of his speeches were as fancy as a beaded bag. But he could also say things that made his Senate colleagues prick up their ears. Sample: "If the object [of this bill] is to provide for friends and dependents, let us say so openly." To a Congressman his voice was "as musical as the chimes of silver bells." But Mrs. Jefferson Davis thought he had "rather the air of a witty bon vivant than that of a great Senator."