In 1859 Benjamin was re-elected to the United States Senate by a majority of one vote (that of the last “Know Nothing” in the Louisiana Legislature). He was now one of the prominent Senators, and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He was in favor of secession only as a last resort; but he thought that this last resort was reached after Lincoln’s election in 1860. He delivered two powerful orations in the Senate in the following winter, and a memorable farewell speech, February 4, 1861, on the right of Louisiana to secede. His last speech in the capital was delivered before the Washington Artillery on Washington’s birthday, and soon after, in New Orleans, he took leave from his family, whom he was never to see again.
Louisiana had already seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, and one month later, February 25, Benjamin was named by the President of the new Confederacy, Jefferson Davis (1808–89) as his Attorney-General. Benjamin assumed his new office at the new capital, Montgomery, Ala.; but there was hardly any work for him to do as an Attorney-General to a government that practically had no courts. But he was often called upon by President Davis to perform other services which required tact and delicacy, and he soon gained the latter’s confidence to a marked degree. On September 17, 1861, Benjamin was named Secretary of War ad interim, to succeed Secretary Walker, acting also as Attorney-General until November 15 of that year. He proved unpopular in his new office, and was blamed by a Congressional committee for not sending ammunition to General Wise, who lost an important battle about that time. But as a matter of fact there was nothing to send, and the President and his Secretary of War preferred to accept official blame to disclosing the dearth and scarcity of powder to a committee of the Confederate Congress, fearing that it might become known to the Yankees. Benjamin shouldered the odium, as usual; but he rose in the estimation of Davis and the other leaders who were conversant with the true state of affairs. Thus it happened that while almost everybody in the South expected Benjamin to be dismissed in disgrace, the surprising news was published on March 27, 1862, that he was promoted to the office of Secretary of State.
His new Department was the one for which he was pre-eminently fit; and while he could not, in the nature of things, accomplish all that was expected of him, he earned the undying fame which was best expressed in the description of him as the “Brains of the Confederacy.” The great problem was to obtain assistance from a maritime power, the only one who could help the blockaded Confederacy, which was prevented by the blockade from selling its chief staple article—cotton. Spain, though a slave power herself at that time, was unfriendly to the former persistent filibusters, and her distrust could not be overcome. France was too friendly with England and would not interfere without the latter’s consent or co-operation, so that even if the South could send out a new Benjamin Franklin to Paris he could accomplish little. Benjamin, like almost all Southern statesmen, believed that England will be unable to get along without cotton, and ignoring or misunderstanding the moral forces which the cause of the North awakened in Europe, he displayed more independence at the beginning than was justifiable. Later, when he was in England, Benjamin declared: “I did not believe that your government would allow such misery to your operatives, such loss to your manufacturers, or that the people themselves would have borne it.” Benjamin believed that recognition (by England and France) even without intervention would end the war, and he might have been right if recognition came early.
Mason, the Southern representative in England, made little headway, and even had his cause been stronger, he was no match for Adams, the minister of the North. Slidell, Benjamin’s friend, was apparently more successful in France. Benjamin authorized him to offer France a cotton subsidy valued at over sixty million francs for breaking the blockade or even for simple recognition of the Confederacy. Emperor Louis Napoleon (1808–73) seemed to have been favorably inclined, and Mercier, the French minister at Washington, who visited Richmond with Lincoln’s permission, was so influenced by Benjamin that he became almost enthusiastic. But communications were unsteady and unsafe, and some dispatches came seven months after they were sent from Paris. As an instance: Benjamin received from Slidell on February 27, 1863, a message written December 27, 1862, stating that the envoy to France was “without any dispatch from you later than April 15th.” The fall of New Orleans, May 1, 1862, blasted the hopes of early intervention.
Benjamin worked very hard as Secretary of State, although there were no ambassadors to be received and no social functions to be attended in Richmond. It has been stated on good authority that President Davis consulted with his Secretary of State more freely than with any other member of his cabinet, and finding him always willing and able, got in the habit of referring to the State Department anything that did not beyond any hope belong to some other department. Benjamin’s assistant secretary, L. O. Washington, writes of him: “He was ever calm, self-poised, and master of all his resources. His grasp of a subject seemed instantaneous. His mind appeared to move without friction. His thought was clear.” Mrs. Jefferson Davis wrote; “Mr. Benjamin was always ready for work; sometimes with half an hour recess, he remained with the Executive from ten in the morning until night.... Both the President and the Secretary of State worked like galley slaves, early and late. Mr. Davis came home fasting, a mere mass of throbbing nerves, and perfectly exhausted; but Mr. Benjamin was always fresh and buoyant.”
When New Orleans fell, his little family, after privations and misadventures, moved to La Grange, Ga., where he could again supply them with money. When the fortune of the Confederacy began to wane, his unpopularity increased, and attacks upon the score of his religion and race, which were never neglected by his opponents during his entire career, were now redoubled. He was especially blamed for the desperate plan, which was carried out through the desire and influence of General Robert E. Lee (1807–70) of enlisting negroes in the Confederate army. On February 9, 1865, Benjamin made, at a mass meeting in Richmond, the last public speech of his life. His power over his audience was still great, but all was lost. Richmond fell in less than two months. After an anxious week at Danville, he accompanied President Davis to Greensboro, where the fugitive government halted for a few days. Taking leave from Mr. Davis, to whom he could no longer be of any assistance, he escaped to the West Indies, where he visited his native place for the last time, and after many dangers and adventures he arrived in England, July 22, 1865.
Although England did not recognize the Confederacy, many sympathized with it, and Benjamin, whose fame preceded him, was received in London with great friendliness, despite the order which he gave as Secretary of State, expelling from the Confederate States all British Consuls, because they persisted in acting under orders from their superiors in Washington. He was befriended by many of the important men of the time in London, including both Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804–81) and William E. Gladstone (1809–98). Having been born in an English colony, the son of an Englishman, he simply returned to his original allegiance, seemingly trying to forget his experience of more than forty years as an American. He never made a political address or a public declaration after leaving America.
His subsequent career as an English barrister, as one of the greatest of barristers in his time, was wonderful, especially when we remember that it was begun when he was over fifty-five years of age; with a past history which was so crowded with activity and exciting experience to wear out any man. He wrote there his Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, with References to the American Decisions, to the French Code and Civil Law which became a legal classic on both sides of the Atlantic. His income from his law practice was for some years as high as £15,000 annually, which was much rarer then than it is now. In 1872 he received a “patent of precedence,” which gave him rank above all other Queen’s Counsels. About 1877 he began to build a new house on Avenue d’Jena (No. 41), in Paris, in which city his wife and only child continued to reside, even after he settled in England. A bad accident caused by an attempt to jump off a tram-car, in 1880, left him a sick man for the rest of his life. Diabetes developed, and in February, 1883, he was forced to announce his retirement from the English Bar. After a notable banquet given in his honor by the Bench and Bar—the first of its kind in England—he retired to his mansion in Paris, where he died May 6, 1884, about seventy-three years old. He was buried according to the rites of the Catholic Church, although it is not believed that he was converted to Christianity. His wife survived him seven years. His only daughter, Ninette, who married Captain Henri de Bousignac, of the French army, died without issue in 1898.