The Hunt for Judah P. Benjamin, the Spy Chief of the Confederacy

[DudleySmith]

The Hunt for Judah P. Benjamin, the Spy Chief of the Confederacy

Suspected of orchestrating the Lincoln assassination, the South’s most prominent Jew escaped to London to start a new life as a high-powered lawyer. The U.S. government secretly tried to bring him home to face justice.

www.tabletmag.com

Two years after the Civil War’s guns went silent, the former Union General George H. Sharpe navigated London’s bone-biting cold and snowy rail lines to reach the U.S. diplomatic mission at 54 Portland Place. His orders from Washington were both secret and explosive: Capture the former secretary of state of the Confederacy, Judah Philip Benjamin, who’d found exile, and a lucrative law practice, in Victorian England.


.... and more, lots more; it's a long piece, with lots of interesting information, and the timelines seem accurate.

 

[Donald H]

Does Trump represent to the south, an opportunity to finally win the revolution?

 

[surada]

The Hunt for Judah P. Benjamin, the Spy Chief of the Confederacy

Suspected of orchestrating the Lincoln assassination, the South’s most prominent Jew escaped to London to start a new life as a high-powered lawyer. The U.S. government secretly tried to bring him home to face justice.

www.tabletmag.com

Two years after the Civil War’s guns went silent, the former Union General George H. Sharpe navigated London’s bone-biting cold and snowy rail lines to reach the U.S. diplomatic mission at 54 Portland Place. His orders from Washington were both secret and explosive: Capture the former secretary of state of the Confederacy, Judah Philip Benjamin, who’d found exile, and a lucrative law practice, in Victorian England.


.... and more, lots more; it's a long piece, with lots of interesting information, and the timelines seem accurate.

He was from Charleston.

 

[whitehall]

Booth was a freaking actor. He thought the defeated South would celebrate Lincoln's assassination. Benjsamin may have wished Lincoln dead but there is no evidence linking him to Booth.

 

[DudleySmith]

Does Trump represent to the south, an opportunity to finally win the revolution?

^^^TDS. It's a real disease.

 

[DudleySmith]

He was from Charleston.

And?

 

[DudleySmith]

Booth was a freaking actor. He thought the defeated South would celebrate Lincoln's assassination. Benjsamin may have wished Lincoln dead but there is no evidence linking him to Booth.

The article points out they didn't have enough evidence to demand an extradition. I don't know either way, I just thought it an interesting story; I like the website, too.


Instead, Sharpe largely focuses on his investigation into John Surratt’s escape to Europe after Lincoln’s assassination and the search for any evidence that Confederate exiles in Europe aided the Southern rebel in his flight. Sharpe’s letter seems to exonerate these overseas Confederates of any role in a crime. “I have to report that, in my opinion, no such legal or reasonable proof exists in Europe of the participation of any persons there, formerly citizens of the United States, as to call for the action of the government,” the report reads.

Judah Benjamin went on to have a spectacularly successful second life in England and became one of the country’s most powerful and affluent barristers. To this day, Benjamin’s legal theories on commercial trade are used in the British court system. His “Benjamin on Sales” is a judicial bible. He was honored by Britain’s elite legal society at the Inner Temple shortly before his death in 1884.

But there’s evidence in the public record that William Seward and George Sharpe never completely cleared Judah Benjamin of playing a role in the Lincoln assassination, at least in their minds. The legal barriers to extraditing him from Europe were huge. On April 8, 1870, the New York Herald, one of the U.S.’s largest dailies, ran an article about Sharpe’s swearing-in as the U.S. marshal for the Southern District Court of New York. The story included this passage on Sharpe’s secret trip to Europe three years earlier:

“General Sharpe was sent by the government to Europe on the highly important and delicate mission of investigating the numerous representations being made to the State Department implicating prominent Confederates abroad in the assassination of President Lincoln,” the article reads. “The General’s real mission was concealed by an impression given to the public that he was on the Surratt affair, at Rome, and this is probably the first time that the public has been informed of the true object of his secret expedition at that time.”

It went on to read: “His report, which was very elaborate, vindicated all prominent Confederates except one from the charge of complicity in the assassination of President Lincoln, and in this case there was not sufficient evidence to justify an appeal to the extradition laws.” It was obvious the “one” was Judah Benjamin.

From the OP link.