2008-09
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2008
Cased sixth plate daguerreotype, ca. late 1840s, artist and location unknown, likely Louisiana, on plate with early Scovills hallmark made in Waterbury, Connecticut, its leatherette case embellished with tooled gold foliate designs on the lid. The portly Benjamin, a prosperous attorney and sugar planter at the time of this sitting, comfortably wears the genial expression typifying his extant portraits. Grant Romer of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film has examined this daguerreotype and feels that it was made in 1846. As such, it was probably taken in either New Orleans or Baton Rouge, well before the young Benjamin entered the national political arena. Prior to the discovery of this image, the earliest known photograph of Benjamin was an ambrotype. The spectacular unpublished portrait offered here is unique by virtue of the daguerrean process and is highly relevant to the historical record of Louisiana, the United States, the Confederacy and, especially, to the Jewish experience in 19th century America. It is in exceptionally fine condition with only trivial marks and the merest hint of marginal haloing. Judah Philip Benjamin (1811-1884) is arguably history's greatest Jewish-American after Albert Einstein. A child immigrant from the Virgin Islands, Benjamin was raised in Charleston's dynamic mercantile culture by a father who founded the nation's first Jewish Reform congregation. Opportunity lured the young Carolinian westward and the talented Benjamin was admitted to the Louisiana bar within a year of his 1832 arrival. By 1842 he was sitting in the state legislature. The turbulent 1850s found Benjamin serving in the U.S. Senate as an advocate of Southern interests. There he befriended the likes of Jefferson Davis, who no doubt was impressed by the Louisiana senator's intelligence, eloquence and energy. In February 1861, Benjamin followed his state into the Confederacy and was immediately given a cabinet post, becoming the new nation's first Attorney General. In September 1861, however, he was named Secretary of War and took personal responsibility for several military setbacks that happened during his watch. In March of 1862, President Davis wisely chose Benjamin to head up the increasingly active Confederate State Department. He remained the Secretary of State until the final dissolution of the Confederate Government in May 1865. Benjamin proved himself a political visionary with a knack for diplomacy. He blossomed. Although failing to secure foreign recognition of the Confederacy, Benjamin's efforts were largely responsible for orchestrating critical material aid from sympathizers abroad. War's end found a wanted Benjamin fleeing the United States for refuge in England. Ever resourceful, he launched a third legal career and was a very successful London barrister for the rest of his life.
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