Collection of Loan Certificates – American Civil War – Portrait of State Secretary Judah Philip Benjamin – United ...

Collection of Loan Certificates – American Civil War – Portrait of State Secretary Judah Philip Benjamin – United States, 1862-1863
12 loan certificates issued by the Confederate States of America (Confederacy) in order to raise funds for war financing. Confederate States of America, 1862-1863.
The certificates are in the sums of $100, $500 and $1000, and attached to each is a different number of interest coupons. All show the portrait of Judah Philip Benjamin.
The Confederacy was created in 1861 by the southern U.S. states allowing slavery. Their secession from the United States triggered the Civil War, which ended with the victory of the Northern states in 1865 and the abolition of slavery.
Judah Philip Benjamin (1811-1884), an attorney and statesman, representative of the State of Louisiana in the American House of Representatives and the second Jew to serve as senator in the U.S. senate. With the secession of Louisiana and the other southern states from the United States Benjamin was appointed Attorney General of the Confederate government, later serving as the Secretary of War and the State Secretary. At the end of the war he fled to England, where he led a successful career as a much sought-after attorney. For more on Benjamin, see item 281.
Benjamin often faced anti-Semitism, both on the part of his allies in the Confederate government and on the part of his rivals. However, his political achievements were admired, and this was expressed, among other things, in the printing of his portrait on loan certificates of the Confederacy and on one of the Confederacy's banknotes (the $2 bill). Benjamin is the first and presumably only Jew whose portrait appeared on an American bill or bond.
Width: 35 cm in average. Height: 31.5 to 43 cm. Condition varies, good to fair. Stains. Tears and open tears. Creases.
Provenance: Morton Leventhal Collection, New York.