JUDAH PHILIP BENJAMIN. THIS IIS eminent lawyer of two countries the United States and England, was born on the island of St. Croix, one of the West Indies group, in 1811. His parents were Jews of English nationality, who sailed from London the year of the birth of their distinguished son, their destination New Orleans, where they intended to establish their permanent home, but the English fleet having blockaded that port, the vessel on which they had sailed, put in to St. Croix, and there the subject of this sketch first saw the light, and there he lived with his parents for nearly four years. In 1815 they moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, where the future great lawyer passed the years of his boyhood, and when but fourteen, he entered Yale College remaining there until 1828, three years, and left without graduating. Early in 1832, he went to New Orleans, entered an attorney's office, and on the 16th of December of the same year was admitted to the practice of the law. While he was a student, he taught and compiled a digest of the cases decided in the local court, and this his first legal work, was only intended for his own private use, but he loaned it to other attorneys and its great utility thus becoming known he enlarged it, and in connection with his friend Thomas Slidell, published it in the year 1834, under the title of "A Digest of Reported Decisions of the Supreme Court of the late Territory of Orleans, and of the Supreme Court of Louisiana." This work was the first collection of the peculiarly complicated law of New Orleans, derived from Roman, Spanish, French and English sources, and to his early study of this composite body of law he owed that remarkable knowledge of different juristic systems, which, in his later years, made him such a distinguished legal light and authority in England. In New Orleans, in 1840, the famous legal firm of Slidell, Benjamin & Conrad was established, which immediately entered upon an immense practice, netting the members, for many successive years, more than $20,000 each, an almost phenomenal income in those days. The leading business of the firm was the causes of the cotton merchants and those of the large planters. At one time during the early days of the existence of the firm, Mr. Benjamin was principal counsel in a case where insurance was claimed, arising from an insurrection of slaves while on board the vessel. It is known to the history of the law in this country as the "Creole Case," and it excited great interest, was printed and widely circulated because of the powerful argument by Mr. Benjamin it contained. In 1847 the United States appointed a commission to investigate the Spanish land titles under which the early speculators in California claimed the land, and in this important research Mr. Benjamin was retained as counsel, with a fee of $25,000. He was absent a year on this commission, at the end of which time he returned to New Orleans and was admitted counselor of the Supreme Court of the United States, and from that period his business was chiefiy arguing causes before that august tribunal. It was now that he began to take an active interest in the politics of the nation. For all his life he had been an ardent Whig, but when, in the early fifties, that old party was disrupted, he affiliated with the Democrats. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1852 and re-elected in 1857, having for his colleague John Slidell. In the Senate Mr. Benjamin made a profound impres sion. Charles Sumner, his constant political opponent, regarded him as the most eloquent speaker in that body, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who was present and heard his remarkable address, on the 31st of December, 1860, in which he justified the right of the states to secede, and declared his adhesion to the cause of the Southern Confederacy, said, "It is better than our Benjamin (referring to Disraeli) could have done." In recognition of his admirable legal talents, President Franklin Pierce offered Mr. Benjamin the position of Associate Justice on the Supreme Bench of the United States, but great as the honor and dignity were, he respectfully declined, preferring to remain in the practice of the profession, or for the reason that he had already decided to abandon the law for the more exciting domain of politics. When South Carolina passed the ordinance of secession he chose to cast his lot with the South. He made several brilliant speeches in the Senate on Constitutional questions from his stand point, defending "State Rights" on legal grounds, and on the 4th of February, 1861, he withdrew from his place in the Senate and, fearing arrest, hastily left Washington. When the provisional government of the Southern Confederacy was formed, Mr. Benjamin was appointed a cabinet officer holding the portfolio of the department of justice. Jefferson Davis, in his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," says him at that juncture: "Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, had a very high reputation as a lawyer and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits and capacity for labor." of In August, he was transferred from the department of justice, of the Confederate States, to that of war, in which office he continued until the reconstruction of the cabinet in February, 1862, when he became Secretary of State, where he remained until the final overthrow of the Confederacy. His exertions in the discharge of his official duties were so great as to almost break down even his iron strength. Beginning work at his office at eight o'clock in the morning, he often remained there for eighteen hours, hard at his labors with only a few moments respite for meals. He had the reputation of being "the brains of the Confederacy", and Mr. Davis, it is alleged, fell into the habit of putting upon Mr. Benjamin all the matter that did not obviously belong to some other department. In an English sketch of his life, referring to that portion which relates to the part he took in the administration of the affairs, it says: "The autocratic character of Mr. Davis' government, and the secrecy often observed in the debates of the House of Representatives, render it doubtful how far Mr. Benjamin was responsible for the many arbitrary measures which marked the conduct of the war by the Confederates." In spite of the high opinion that Mr. Davis had formed of him, some of his measures were sharply opposed in the Congress, and the 'severe criticism evoked by his conscription law led to his resignation as Secretary of War in 1862. When he, in 1864, was Secretary of State, Gen. Johnston declared that the Confederate cause could never succeed so long as he remained minister. On the collapse of the Confederate Government, Mr. Benjamin fled from Richmond and his adventures, which are briefly quoted from authentic Confederate sources, of his "escape to England were of a most romantic nature." "Mr. Davis departed from Richmond after the news of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, accompanied by the members of his cabinet. On leaving Greensborough, North Carolina, on the 12th of April, 1865, Mr. Benjamin, to whom corpulence had made riding rather difficult, insisted that an ambulance should be found for |