An exceptionally scarce work purporting to publish the clandestine communications of Judah P. Benjamin. In the communications, he seems to have been working behind the scenes, scheming to find a way to ensure that slavery could forever be preserved in the South.
The work is particularly rare, and covers various intersections of interest. Benjamin Judah [1811-1884] was the only Jewish member of the Confederate Cabinet and was later the first nonr-recanting Jewish person elected to the United States Senate.
The work undoubtedly means to ping on historically anti-semitic tropes of Jewish people as schemers and plotters, tropes which ultimate root themselves in Christians' suspicion of Jewish plottings leading to the death of Jesus. The North had dubbed him the "brains of the Confederacy."
Before joining the Confederate Cabinet, he had practiced law in New Orleans, where he specialized in international commerce and litigated several important cases related to the slave trade. He himself owned a small plantation and "owned" 140 slaves.
No copies at auction or in the trade.
Benjamin, Judah P. The African Slave Trade. The Secret Purpose of the Insurgents to Revive it. No Treaty Stipulations Against the Slave Trade to be Entered into with the European Powers. Judah P. Benjamin's Intercepted Instructions to L. Q. C. Lamar, Styled Commissioner, Etc. Philadelphia. C Sherman, Son & Co., Printers. 1863. 24pp.
A good copy, bound in wraps, shaken, with rear wrap absent. Pages are generally bright, toned throughout and are handled.
