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| Confederate Currency 1864 $2 Dollar Bill T-70 |
Confederate States Currency $2 Bill from Richmond, Virginia, February 17th 1864 T-70 Civil War Note
Obverse: At the right side is Judah P. Benjamin, who served as Secretary of State and Secretary of War for the Confederacy. A well inked pink underprint is found on this crisp late issue Deuce.
Reverse:
Inscriptions: "Two years after the ratification of a treaty of peace between the Confederate States & the United States of America, The Confederate States of America will pay to the bearer on demand Two Dollars/ Richmond Feb. 17th 1864/ Engraved & Printed by Keatinge & Ball"
Manufacturer: CSA - Confederacy Capital - Montgomery AL, Richmond VA (932,800 total issued)
This is the last of the Judah P. Benjamin two dollar notes that the Confederacy issued during the Civil War.
Judah P. Benjamin was born a British subject in the Danish West Indies to Sephardic Jewish parents on August 6, 1811. He was known as the Brains of the Confederacy. Benjamin spent most of his childhood years in North and South Carolina. In 1832 he started his law practice in New Orleans, the following year he married Natalie St. Martin, of a prominent New Orleans creole family. Benjamin became a slave owner and established a sugar plantation in Belle Chasse Louisiana and both his plantation and legal practice prospered. In 1850 Benjamin sold his sugar plantation and its 150 slaves, he never again owned slaves. Jefferson Davis appointed Benjamin to be the first Attorney of the Confederacy on February 25, 1861. In November of the same year, he became the secretary of war. As a reward for his loyalty, Davis appointed him Secretary of State in March of 1862. What Judah P. Benjamin wanted most during his tenure as Secretary of State was to draw Great Britain into the civil war on the side of the confederacy. Some think that he almost succeeded in this endeavour, but in the end, England decided against helping the South because of the issue of slavery. Benjamin also wanted to arm the slaves to help fight for the confederacy in the later stages of the war, when he saw how badly things were going military, but the southern traditionalists would have no part of this plan. Robert E. Lee also supported this plan, finally it was passed in the spring of 1865, by which time it was to late.
When the Civil War ended, Judah P. Benjamin fled to England, because he was accused of being the mastermind of the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. Fearing that he could never recieve a fair trial, he went into permanent exile in Great Britain. However, he prospered in England as well as he had prospered in the American South. In June 1866 he was called to the bar in England, in 1868 he published his Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, which became a classic in its field. The book is still being printed under the title Benjamin's Sale of Goods. In 1872 he became Queen's Counsel. Judah P. Benjamin died in Paris on May 6, 1884 and was buried at Pere Lachaise cemetary under the name of Phillippe Benjamin.