Judah P. Benjamin - Surrender of Confederacy

Surrender of Confederacy

After Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, Judah P. Benjamin fled south with Jefferson Davis and the rest of his cabinet, but he left the group shortly before they reached Washington, Georgia, where they held their last meeting.

In the immediate aftermath of the end of the war, Benjamin and Davis were rumored to have masterminded the assassination of Abraham Lincoln through the Confederate intelligence apparatus. According to Benjamin's biographer, Eli Evans, no evidence for this assertion has been found by historians. Fearing that he would not receive a fair trial, Benjamin burned his papers and is reported to have stayed in Ocala, Florida, with Solomon Benjamin, a relative, before continuing south to Gamble Mansion in Ellenton, on the southwest coast of Florida. From there, assisted by the blockade runner Captain Archibald McNeill, who owned the plantation, as well as William Whitaker, Benjamin traveled by sea to the Bahamas and then to England under a false name. His escape from Florida to England was not without hardship. The small sponge-carrying vessel on which he left Bimini bound for Nassau exploded on the way, and he and the three crewmen had to be rescued by a British warship. His ship from the Bahamas to England caught fire, but managed to make it to port. He was the only high-ranking Confederate politician to flee the country to avoid treason charges.

The historian Donald C. Simmons thinks that Benjamin may have considered joining his brother Joseph Benjamin, Colin J. McRae, the former Confederate Financial Agent in Europe, and other Confederates at New Richmond, British Honduras, in the Confederate settlements.