Judah P. Benjamin, a founder of the…

Judah P. Benjamin, a founder of the Illinois Central Railroad, a state legislator, and a planter who owned one hundred and forty slaves until he sold his plantation in 1850, has served as a U.S. Senator from Louisiana since 1852.

Born to English Jewish parents in the British West Indies and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, he is one of the first senators to call for Southern secession in the wake of Lincoln's victory.

Speaking in December 1860 of the South's determination to secede, Benjamin says “It is a revolution and it can no more be checked by human effort...than a prairie fire by a gardener's watering pot.”