Judah Benjamin was "called to the bar" in London on today's date in 1866, when he was in his mid-50s, and went on to a dazzlingly successful legal career there. (He is pictured above a few years earlier, on the Confederate two-dollar bill.)
Benjamin had risen from humble origins in Charleston, SC, and New Orleans to become a US senator, until he resigned in his second term when Louisiana seceded. A close ally of Jefferson Davis, he served the Confederacy as attorney general and secretary of war, then from 1862 to 1865 as secretary of state. Whether in the USA, the Confederacy or the United Kingdom, he had to overcome anti-Semitic prejudice.
While Benjamin was among those Confederates toward the end of the war who were prepared to recruit slaves for the Army and promise them freedom, he was also a determined defender of slavery, and after the war (in correspondence) an opponent of black political rights and critic of Reconstruction.
It was fortunate for the Union cause that his counterpart as US secretary of state was the equally brilliant and even more effective William H. Seward.
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