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Page 32 The Southern Israelite E. H.JORDAN & SONS 205-7 GOULD BUILDING Extend Cordial Greetings of Good Felloivsh'p out'of'doors IRA M. VALENTINE Operating as STEWART-WARNER SALES COMPANY ATLANTA, GEORGIA Veeder-Root Counters Waltham Speedometers J. Burt Moore J. W. Lyerly ANSLEY GARAGE CO. STORAGE REPAIRING To Oar Friends The Season's Greetings WASHING GREASING 670 Boulevard, N.E. Phone Walnut 5680 With the Pest Wishes of the Manufacturers of KARO UNIT M AZOLA — KRE-MEL H. Z. HOPKINS COMPANY Adjusters oe Fire Losses for the Assured TRUST COMPANY OF GEORGIA BUILDING ATLANTA, GEORGIA H. Z. HOPKINS C. I). MARTIN, JR. J. B. TUGGLE X. L. GEDDES McCord-St ewart Company Importers, Manufacturers Wholesale Grocers Coffee Roasters West Hunter and Haynes Streets ATLANTA, GA. South Commemorates Judah P. Be), > }1Un (Continued from page 7) was among those recently chosen for the Hall of Fame. Recently, the Sons of Confederate Veterans adopted a resolution to erect upon Monument Avenue a memorial to Judah P. Benjamin. A committee has been appointed to raise $50,(XX) for this purpose. Already, the Richmond City Council has set aside the inter section of Monument and Malvern avenues. As both streets are broad, there will be a spacious approach to the proposed memorial, a noble setting for the future bronze figure. Gaston Lichtenstein, of Richmond, is chairman of the committee having this proposed statue in hand. Not only will the Sons of Confederate Veterans throughout the Southern States co operate to bring this memorial to com pletion, but it is understood that the legal profession of both America and England will contribute individually and as organizations in order to fur ther the plan. Benjamin’s Richmond home during the War was on Main Street, near Foushee Street, and the former site of the house is now indi cated by a stone tablet placed in the sidewalk. The committee, which is headed by Mr. Lichtenstein, is com posed of Leo A. Conrad, secretary and treasurer; George A. Bowden, auditor, and David L. Pulliam, Walter L. Hop kins, Herbert T. Ezekiel, and Edwin II. Courtney. At Ellenton, Fla., the old Gamble Mansion—which five years ago by an Act of the State Legislature was made a perpetual memorial—stands a typi cal colonnaded home of the days “be fore the War”. The building was ac quired largely through the efforts of the Judah P. Benjamin Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy. It is a notable example of the architecture of the Old South. The three-acre site on which it stands was also conveyed to the State. Ellenton, in Manate County, is not far from Daytona Beach, where, by the way, the Judah P. Benjamin Lodge of the B’nai B'rith annually conducts a gold medal essay contest on the life of Benjamin. The local inhabitants of Ellenton still tell details of the days when Benjamin went into hiding with his friends, the Gambles, at their sugar plantation. They say he stayed at the Gamble Mansion for about a month, sleeping in the front bedroom on the second floor. From Mr. Louis Ossinsky (deputy for Florida of the B’nai B’rith Grand Lodge) we learn that: "In the rear of the building on the second floor is located an alcove con structed of oyster-shell blocks, the same as the rest of the building. Ben jamin had a little room in the top of this alcove which he could get by removing some of the blocks and re placing them after being inside. It was necessary for him to use this little hiding-place on numerous occasions when the soldiers came to the mansion looking for him. “On one occasion the soldiers came to the mansion and he did not have time to reach his hiding-place and thereupon he assumed butler and waited on tin had been sent to look said that he dropped a waiting on the officers, an ble, to assist in the dism !t >on of ( rs that • It is ' while T. Gam- . . , kicked him and stated to the offit , ,, ,| iat t , white help was terrible." vouch for this curious am present it for what it is - Our informant closes his 1 tier with these words: “In the middle of the i P. Benjamin, in an open went down the river and boarded a vessel for the Bahama Islands, whence he went to England.” The escape of Benjamin was not quite so simple as this, however. From the time he parted with Jefferson Davis at Washington, Georgia, and made his way through Florida dis guised in homespun clothes, until he ultimately reached England, lie had many adventures. The yawl boat on which he set sail June 23rd, 18<>5, ior the six-hundred-mile trip across the Gulf to the Bimini Islands, a British possession, reached there on July 10th. Three days later he left for Nassau in a small sloop loaded with wet sponges. When the sponges dried they expanded and opened the seams of the boat which founded at sea one day out. The occupants jumped into a small skiff which was in tow—with one oar, a pot of rice, a small keg of water and three negroes as his companions in disaster. Luckily they were not "res cued” by a federal gunboat but were picked up by His Britannic Majesty s Lighthouse Yacht, Georgia, which put back to Bimini where Benjamin again chartered a sloop and started the same afternoon on the hundred-mile voyage for Nassau, and after six days arrived there on July 21st. Thence he took a steamer for St. Thomas Islands to con nect with another vessel bound for England. In St. Thomas he visited the scenes of his early childhood, for he had been born at St. Croix in the West Indies in 1811, his parents having been English Jews who had dwelt there. Sailing for England on August 15th. the ship caught fire when sixty miles at sea, limped back to port, was re fitted and eventually Benjamin arrived in England! It would be difficult to overstate the influence Judah P. Benjamin had i his efforts to secure recognition abroad for the Confederacy. He bent a large part of his enegies to this task. ^ e today can understand how, after ha\- ing been a resident of Louisiana t\ r more than thirty' y'ears when the W ar broke out, his sympathies should have been with the Southern cause. There were times during the conflict " hen Benjamin was unpopular in the Sou but Jefferson Davis reposed steadta confidence in him. It has been said close students of the political b - of that feverish period that if ‘ jamin had remained at his P°' Senator when the Southern Sena withdrew Johnson of Tennessee. (Continued on page 50)