Judah P. Benjamin - Statesman of the Lost Cause

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JUDAH P. BENJAMIN Statesman of the JCoft Cause by ROLLIN OSTERWEIS. Originally published in 1933. FOREWORD: How time changes all things and especially our opinions of men and measures. When I think what we were taught in the time of fierce passions after the Civil War, taught about the personal motives of Jefferson Davis and his associates, about the treachery of Andrew Johnson and the necessity and the justice of the reconstruction measures, and then think of the revision or reversal of these opinions which time has brought, it brings home the modesty which ought to characterize our present judgments and especially our judgments of men and their motives. It is a great thing that the passions of the Civil War have cooled and that we can study with charity and without bias the point of view and the springs of action of the great men of the time, both North and South. Of course, for us of the North the Southerners who first received due recognition were the warriors. For one thing they did brilliant fighting which all could understand. For another thing we think of the soldier as obeying orders and we relieve him in our minds of responsibility for the policies which we condemn. Thus our bitterness was reserved for the civilians, and boys of my time were taught to regard as a peculiarly wicked traitor that very conscientious and high minded gentleman who, with many mistakes and with fatal faults of temper and temperament, yet guided the Confederacy with single-minded devotion to duty as he saw it. The persecution of Davis by the North made him a martyr, and the memory of the man who through the second half of the Civil War was quite unpopular with the Southern people has become a symbol of the lost cause. The whirligig of time brings in its revenges. No such good fortune came to Judah P. Benjamin. He gave without stint of his enormous vitality and brilliant ability. Although his advice was sought on all subjects by his chief, to whom he was absolutely loyal, diplomacy was his chief sphere of action. In this sphere fate had stacked the cards against the Confederacy. The North held the good hands and while Charles Francis Adams had the playing of those hands there was no hope of success for the South. Her military success was never quite sufficient to move John Bull from his platform of neutrality and the question of negro slavery, especially after the emancipation proclamation, was an insuperable handicap to every Southern diplomatist. Yet it is hard to see how any man could have done better than Benjamin. He was one of the few who foresaw the length and the desperate chances of the war. His plan for exporting a vast quantity of cotton to England as a reserve on which to draw for the expenses of the war seems at this date to have been the highest wisdom. He was one of the first to recognize the need of using the negroes as soldiers. Mr. Osterweis tells the circum stances under which he resigned as Secretary of War, circumstances which indicated a higher degree of patriotism than any feats of brilliancy on the battle field. But the chief adviser of an unsuccessful administra tion inevitably was unpopular. He and Seward were very different in character and mind. Yet in certain things they were alike. Each was a trusted adviser of his chief. Each was loyal to that chief in success or failure. Each was the object of bitter attack on the part of those who opposed the administration, but who could not reach the head of it, and each was supported and sustained by his chief to the end with the un swerving trust he had deserved...