Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

'THE LAW OF THE LAND IS THE LAW"
Antebellum Jews, Slavery, and the Old South
IASON H. SILVERMAN
f there was a Jewish Ashley Wilkes in the Old South surely it would have been
Judah P. Benjamin. Master of the New Orleans plantation, Bellecbase, and its
some one hundred and forty slaves, Benjamin was in many ways an icon of the
southern planter and gentleman. And, while no one would doubt that Benjamin
was a true, bonafi.de antebellum southern slaveowner, his quiet attitude toward the
"peculiar institution" perhaps reflects the deep and contradictory feelings shared
by some of his fellow southern Jews seeking acceptance and assimilation. For,
"though he entered the ranks of the planter class that ruled the [Old South],"
wrote one of his biographers, "[Benjamin] never felt that slavery reflected the
divine order of things. He was not taken in by distorted theories of the Bible; he
never argued that Blacks were of a lower order; and he hated the cruelty of the
overseers he heard about." 1
An attorney and the first openly Jewish United States senator, Benjamin rose
to become such a symbol of the antebellum South that he eventually occupied the
three most significant cabinet positions in the Confederacy (attorney general, secretary
of war, and secretary of state). And yet this undeniable symbol of what the
Old South represented was vehemently critical of the most inhuman aspects of
slavery and eloquently denounced its cruelties, though he stopped short of actually
opposing the "peculiar institution" itself. Arguing a case early in his legal
career, Benjamin articulated beliefs shared by many of his fellow southern slaveholding
Jews. Albeit racist in tone, his argument nevertheless may be considered
enlightened by the standards of his day and it bears quoting. "What is a slave?"
Benjamin rhetorically asked the court.
He is a human being. He has feeling and passion and intellect. His heart,
like the heart of the white man, swells with love, burns with jealousy, aches
four
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