Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/639

Rh for the institutions of the South and for peace. When Virginia cast her lot with the Confederacy, Mr. Hunter represented the State in the Provisional Congress, and was soon called to the secretaryship of state. He served from July, 1861, to March, 1862, and then entered the Confederate Congress as senator from Virginia. He was one of the peace commissioners at the Hampton Roads conference, after which he presided over a war meeting at Richmond. At the close of the war he was arrested and confined for a time, but in 1867 received a pardon from President Johnson. He became treasurer of Virginia in 1877, and in 1880 retired to his farm, where he died July 18, 1887.

Judah Philip Benjamin, secretary of state of the Confederacy during the greater part of the existence of the government, was born at St. Croix, West Indies, August 11, 1811, the son of English Jews then en route to America. Soon after his birth the family settled at Wilmington, N. C. He entered Yale college at fourteen years of age and studied three years, then making his home at New Orleans, where he was admitted to the bar in 1832. During his early years as a lawyer he published a digest of Supreme court decisions. In 1840 he was a member of the celebrated law firm of Slidell, Benjamin & Conrad, and in 1845 he sat in the Louisiana constitutional convention. In 1847 he was counsel for the United States commission to investigate Spanish land titles in California. On his return he made his residence at Washington and practiced before the United States Supreme court. He was a Presidential elector for Louisiana in 1848, was elected United States senator in 1852, and re-elected in 1859. On February 4, 1861, he withdrew from the Senate with his colleague and law partner, John Slidell. Appointed attorney-general under the Provisional government he served until September, 1861, when he was called to the secretaryship of war. March 18, 1862, he was