The Lost Cause still lives on in Southern hearts, but occasionally a rather nasty modern note is liable to show up in the observances that keep its memory alive; Harry L. Golden tells here of one such instance, when an effort was made to read Judah P. Benjamin out of the Southern hall of fame.
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For all his huge bulk, his diabetes, and his addiction to twelve black cigars a day, Judah P. Benjamin certainly got around. Born in the Virgin Islands, he emigrated to South Carolina, received his primary education in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and later attended Yale University. He practiced law in Louisiana, served two terms as Senator for that state, declined President Pierce’s offer of a seat on the Supreme Court, and, on the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, strode out of the Senate arm in arm with Senator Jefferson Davis. He served in the Confederate cabinet as Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State. After Lee’s surrender, he bade his chief farewell at Danville, Virginia, disguised himself as a Negro “mammy,” slipped through the Union lines in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, and escaped to British Honduras in an open boat. He arrived in England penniless, but was welcomed at the home of Alfred Tennyson. Already fiftyfour, he enrolled in the Inns of Court along with lads of twenty. Within five years he was a leader of the British bar, and there was a move to elevate him to the High Court, but Palmerston feared it would offend the American government. If ever there was a “wandering Jew” it was old Judah P. Benjamin. Born a British subject, he achieved distinction in America, won new fame and honor in England, and died in France. In 1948, we dedicated a granite marker to his memory in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Why 1948? And why in Charlotte?
The North Carolina chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy had picked Charlotte for its convention city in 1948. The organization usually includes in this annual event the dedication of a historical marker. One year it marked “the spot where Jefferson Davis stood when he heard of Lee’s surrender”; another year, “the site of the last meeting of the Confederate cabinet”; and so forth.
For the 1948 convention, the “historian” of the group, Mrs. J. A. Yarbrough, recommended to her committee that a marker be dedicated to the memory of Judah P. Benjamin. For background, she offered photostats of letters written by Mrs. Jefferson Davis indicating that Judah P. Benjamin had been an overnight guest at the home of Abram Weil, a Jewish merchant of Charlotte, who had given sanctuary to most of the Confederate leaders and their families. After the committee’s approval, the matter was brought before the membership of the Stonewall Jackson Chapter in Charlotte, which was to be the official host to the forthcoming convention. Mrs. Yarbrough’s resolution was passed unanimously; the chapter would gladly “accept a gift of a granite marker, in memory of Judah P. Benjamin, and sponsor its dedication” as a climax to its 1948 convention.
Mrs. Yarbrough mailed us a copy of the resolution at the office of the Carolina Israelite, and we assured her there would be no difficulty in securing the marker for her organization. We brought the matter to the attention of the two Charlotte temples, the Conservative Temple Israel and the Reform Temple Beth El, and the trustees voted the necessary funds without hesitation. Mrs. Yarbrough and I then applied to the City Council for permission to place the marker on city property. Permission was granted without debate, and we ordered a stone with the following inscription:
Judah P. Benjamin
Attorney-General, Secretary of War,
and Secretary of State of the
Confederate Government,
was the guest, April 26, 1865,
of Abram Weil, whose home stood
on this site.This monument in his honor
was placed by
Temple Israel and Temple Beth El,
the Jewish Congregations
of Charlotte, N. G, as a gift to the
Stonewall Jackson Chapter
United Daughters of the Confederacy
October 1, 1948
A month before the event, all arrangements had been completed. The police department agreed to close the street to traffic during the ceremony; Dr. Hunter B. Blakely, president of the local women’s college, agreed to deliver the dedicatory address; and the story was released to the press.
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At this point, however, Mr. Arnold Smith, a banker in New York, sent a letter to his mother-in-law in Charlotte. The motherin-law, a member of the Stonewall Jackson Chapter, had the following portions of the letter mimeographed and a copy sent to every member of the Confederate Daughters in North Carolina:
. . . My pleasure in scanning the pages of my home-town [Charlotte] newspaper was interrupted this morning when I saw and read the enclosed article relative to a memorial to Judah P. Benjamin. This leaves no doubt in my mind that the United Daughters of the Confederacy have been completely ‘taken in’ by the editor of this ‘Jewish [sic] Carolina Israelite’ and, unless they withdraw their support of this project, will be made an unwitting tool in another scheme which is nothing else but propaganda for the Jewish race. It is a well-known fact that a powerful effort, well financed here [New York], and country-wide in scope, is being made to identify the Jewish race with things American. The underlying idea is to counteract the increasing resentment on the part of rightminded people toward the manner in which the Jews conduct themselves. The indictment against them is far too long to submit here, for it would fill many pages. Perhaps the most flagrant recent example was the pressure exerted by organized Jewry on the American government to gamble away the security of the U.S. Navy by antagonizing the Arabs. The U.D.C. might also find food for thought in the fact that nearly all the Communists in America are Jews, and that most of the funds and agitators used in stirring up your Southern Negroes are Jewish in origin.
“The argument may be used by some of your members that ‘our local Jews’ are ‘good Jews.’ This old cliché is used time and again as a cover-up. But be not deceived—the socalled ‘good Jews’ are ‘good’ only because they are as yet unrevealed, and even the ‘good’ ones work hand in hand with the most objectionable of their race. The effrontery of this propaganda attempt will become more apparent if one examines the role which this Judah P. Benjamin played in Confederate history. He was nothing more than a communistic Jewish politician from the North, who was born in a foreign land, and who played an ignominious role in the history of our South. In fact, the ‘visit’ in Charlotte, which has been made the flimsy excuse for these proceedings, probably was made while Benjamin was in flight while your fighting men of the South from whom you ‘Daughters’ descend, stayed on and faced the consequences of defeat. . . .
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Two days after the distribution of this reprint, the Stonewall Jackson Chapter held a special meeting. Mrs. Yarbrough presented her case well. Aside from the morality involved, she pointed out that the two Jewish temples did not initiate the project, but had generously responded to solicitation for a “gift” to the Confederate Daughters. It was all to no avail. The chapter voted to rescind its sponsorship, and the secretary was instructed to notify us officially that the name of their organization “must not appear on any Benjamin marker.” The vote fell two short of being unanimous, Mrs. Yarbrough and the lone Jewish member of the organization being the only dissenters.
Mrs. Yarbrough immediately made known her intention of carrying the issue to the national headquarters of the U.D.C.
The trustees of the two temples, of course, were upset by this turn of events. Innocent bystanders, they now found themselves with a major controversy on their hands and an unwanted slab of stone. Those among them who felt that Jewish “security” was imperiled whenever the word “Jew” appeared in public print, were all for dropping the granite marker into the Catawba River and forgetting the whole thing as quickly as possible. One of the rabbis, representing this group, called on Mrs. Yarbrough and urged her to drop the matter, arguing: “We will have to go on living in this town with these people.” Mrs. Yarbrough replied: “Rabbi, have you considered that you will have to go on living in this town with me, too?” At a joint meeting the next day, the temples voted unanimously to see her through.
That same night Mrs. Yarbrough made a trip to Little Rock, Arkansas, to the home of Mrs. John Wineman, President-General of the U.D.C. Mrs. Wineman pledged her immediate and wholehearted support. She, in turn, telephoned Mrs. A. L. Thompson, president of the North Carolina division of the organization, who immediately called a meeting of her board in Greensboro; they voted unanimously to accept the gift of the Benjamin marker on behalf of the state organization. We then ordered the stone-cutter to shave off two inches of the granite and replace the words “Stonewall Jackson Chapter” with “North Carolina Division.”
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The Stonewall Jackson Chapter decided to resist to the bitter end. A group of their most prominent members appeared before the City Council to demand that the permit to erect the marker on city property be withdrawn. They were armed with affidavits to the effect that the marker would impede the movements of people getting on and off the city buses. After a long and heated discussion, the Council voted to let the permit stand as originally approved, Mayor H. H. Baxter pointing out that “the permit was granted in the first place on the application of two reputable religious organizations, and there is nothing before us to warrant its revocation.”
The next day another crisis loomed. Dr. Blakely, the college president scheduled to deliver the dedicatory address, pulled out. In his message of regret, he said that he had not known that “Benjamin Judah [sic] was such a highly controversial person.”
With only two days left before the dedication, we called on Dr. Warner L. Hall, minister of the Covenant Church, which is probably the largest Presbyterian congregation in America, bringing an official invitation signed by our two rabbis. Dr. Hall readily accepted. At first, we planned to withhold public announcement of Dr. Hall’s scheduled appearance; Mrs. Yarbrough was afraid that the “anti-Semites” might scare him off (she always referred to the opposing group as “the anti-Semites”). We decided, however, that this would be unfair to Dr. Hall, since he was bound to meet criticism for having participated in the event and it might later appear as though we had “put one over” on him. We therefore sent his photograph to the morning paper with the story of his acceptance. The paper is delivered at 7:30 AM; at 8:00 AM a delegation from the Stonewall Jackson Chapter appeared at Dr. Hall’s home. He told the group—most of them members of his own congregation—that “my Jewish colleagues have invited me to speak at one of their functions, I have accepted, and you have told me nothing that would justify my withdrawing.”
The hour finally came, but when the rabbi opened the ceremony with the invocation there were very few “Daughters of the Confederacy” in sight. The Stonewall Jackson Chapter, as “host lodge” of the convention, controlled the program, and their leaders had called for a “special memorial prayer service” at the exact hour of the Benjamin dedication, thus keeping most of the delegates glued to their seats in the convention hall. But Mayor Baxter was there, and so was Mrs. Wineman, the President-General, and Mrs. Thompson, the State President, and Mrs. Yarbrough, and of course Dr. Hall, who delivered a prayer for brotherhood just as the memorial to old Judah was being firmly set into the concrete of a Charlotte sidewalk.
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