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Rh but for the right of self-government, for independence." 61 "How it makes one's breast swell with emotion to witness the calm, heroic, unconquerable determination to be free that fills the breast of all ages, sexes, and conditions." 62

Like many other Southerners, Benjamin rather melo-dramatically declared that he would never be taken alive. He never was. Like many others, he declared that he would never, never, submit. Lee, Johnston, Davis, Stephens submitted; Benjamin never. His Jewish obstinacy would not be overcome.

No, it is utterly unjust to deny that his patriotism was genuine or that he gave his very best sincerely and in his way unselfishly to what he felt to be his country. Only with him nothing went deep. When the struggle was over, it was over. Some measure of his sunny cheerfulness must be credited to self-control. Most of it was temperament. Lee, too, made no complaint; but the tragedy of his people was written perpetually on his face. Benjamin's face would not take impressions of that nature. Not one regret for a lost cause or a vanished country is to be found in his few personal letters that have come down to us. " I am contented and cheerful under all reverses," he writes. And, though this particular phrase was used to cheer his anxious family, it is intimately characteristic of his permanent attitude.

The truth is, he was a man placed in a position too large for him, and he rattles about in it. The crises of