Two Printed Booklets – Speeches in Support of Slavery by Senator Judah Philip Benjamin – United States, 1860

Two speeches in support of slavery, delivered by the Jewish Senator Judah Philip Benjamin to the American Senate on the eve of the Civil War. Baltimor and Washington, May 1860. English.
Judah Philip Benjamin (1811-1884), a Jewish-American lawyer and senator, served as Secretary of War and Secretary of State of the Confederate States during the Civil War. The scion of a family of immigrants from Britain, Benjamin grew up and was educated in North Carolina, and was accepted to study law at Yale University at fourteen years of age. His extraordinary talents won him a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1842, and ten years later he became the second Jewish senator in the United States. Benjamin was strongly opposed to the abolition of slavery, and after the southern states seceded from the Union, he was appointed a cabinet member, secretary of war, and secretary of state of the Confederate States. After the defeat of the South ended his public career in the United States, he went to England, where he became an advisor to Queen Victoria. In his final years, he turned his back completely upon his American past, destroyed his personal papers, broke off relations with his acquaintances, and never set foot in the United States again.
These booklets contain two of the speeches that Benjamin gave before the American Senate on the eve of the Civil War, which express his firm opposition to the emancipation of the slaves in the United States. The speeches attack, among other things, the views of the "senator from Illinois" – Abraham Lincoln – and seek to show the contradictions, errors, and subversion against the United States Constitution that Lincoln’s positions supposedly contained.
1. Relations of States, Speech of The Hon. J.P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, Delivered in The Senate of The U.S., May 8, 1860, on The Resolutions Submitted by The Hon. Jefferson Davis. Baltimore: Murphy & Co., [1860].
8 pp, 23 cm. Good condition. First and last leaves are detached. Slight stains. Minor blemishes and tears at margins.
2. Defence of The National Democracy Against The Attack of Judge Douglass - Constitutional Rights of The States, Speech of Hon. J.P. Benjamin, of Louisiana. Washington: The National Democratic Executive Committee, 1860.
21 pp, 22 cm. Good-fair condition. A small number of stains. Tears to title page (most of them reinforced with adhesive tape). Adhesive tape along the spine.
Both not in NLI.