{"product_id":"judah-benjamin-counselor-to-the-confederacy-jewish-lives-9780300229264","title":"Judah Benjamin: Counselor to the Confederacy (Jewish Lives)","description":"\u003cp\u003eA moral examination of Judah Benjaminone of the first Jewish senators  confidante to Jefferson Davis  and champion of the cause of slavery  This new biography complicates the legacy of Benjamin . . . who used his nimble legal mind to defend slavery and the Confederacy.New York Times Book Review  A cogent argument for acknowledging  rather than ignoring  Benjamins role in both Jewish and American history.Diane Cole  Wall Street Journal  Judah P. Benjamin (18111884) was a brilliant and successful lawyer in New Orleans  and one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He then served in the Confederacy as secretary of war and secretary of state  becoming the confidant and alter ego of Jefferson Davis. In this new biography  author James Traub grapples with the difficult truth that Benjamin  who was considered one of the greatest legal minds in the United States  was a slave owner who deployed his oratorical skills in defense of slavery.  How could a man as gifted as Benjamin  knowing that virtually all serious thinkers outside the American South regarded slavery as the most abhorrent of practices  not see that he was complicit with evil? This biography makes a serious moral argument both about Jews who assimilated to Southern society by embracing slave culture and about Benjamin himself  a man of great resourcefulness and resilience who would not  or could not  question the practice on which his own success  and that of the South  was founded.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45953318125621,"sku":"ByrdShop_0300229267","price":21.22,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780300229264.jpg?v=1788185056","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/judah-benjamin-counselor-to-the-confederacy-jewish-lives-9780300229264","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}