Judah P. Benjamin - Political Career

Political Career

In 1842, Benjamin was elected to the lower house of the Louisiana State Legislature as a Whig. In 1845, he served as a member of the state Constitutional Convention. He sold his plantation and its 150 slaves in 1850.

By 1852, Benjamin's reputation as an eloquent speaker with a subtle legal mind was sufficient to win him selection by the state legislature to the U.S. Senate. He was the second Jewish senator, after David Levy Yulee of Florida, who was elected by his state legislature in 1845.

The outgoing President, Millard Fillmore of the Whig Party, offered to nominate Benjamin, a Southerner, to fill a Supreme Court vacancy after the Senate Democrats had defeated Fillmore's other nominees for the post. The New York Times reported (on February 15, 1853) that "if the President nominates Benjamin, the Democrats are determined to confirm him." He was the first Jewish-American to be formally offered a Supreme Court appointment. Benjamin declined. He took office as senator on March 4, 1853. While in the Senate, he challenged another young senator, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, to a duel over a perceived insult on the Senate floor; Davis apologized, and the two began a close friendship.

Benjamin quickly gained a reputation as a great orator. In 1854, President Franklin Pierce offered him nomination to a seat on the Supreme Court, which he declined for a second time. Had he accepted in either instance he would have been the first Jewish justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As it was it would not be for another 62 years until 1916 when Louis Brandeis became the first Jewish justice of the Supreme Court following his nomination by President Woodrow Wilson.

He was a noted advocate of the interests of the South. According to the author Carl Sandburg, the abolitionist Benjamin Wade of Ohio said the Southern senator was "a Hebrew with Egyptian principles", as he represented slaveholders. Benjamin replied, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain."

By the next election, amid increasing regional tensions and divisions among Whigs over the issue of slavery, Benjamin had joined the Democratic Party; in the South the party was dominated by the planter slaveholding elite. He was elected by the state legislature in 1858 to serve as U.S. senator. During the 34th through 36th Congresses, he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Private Land Claims. Benjamin resigned his seat on February 4, 1861, after Louisiana seceded from the Union.