Benjamin was called the “brains of the Confederacy” and in acuteness of intellect he probably surpassed most men of his time.  He resembled Disraeli in this as well as in being a thorough-going believer in an aristocratic method of government rather than in one based on universal suffrage and the will of the masses determined by majority vote.

FAREWELL TO THE UNION (On Leaving the United States Senate in 1861)

Mr. President, if we were engaged in the performance of our accustomed legislative duties, I might well rest content with the simple statement of my concurrences in the remarks just made by my colleague [Mr. Slidell].  Deeply impressed, however, with the solemnity of the occasion, I cannot remain insensible to the duty of recording, among the authentic reports of your proceedings, the expression of my conviction that the State of Louisiana has judged and acted well and wisely in this crisis of her destiny.

Sir, it has been urged, on more than one occasion, in the discussions here and elsewhere, that Louisiana stands on an exceptional footing.  It has been said that whatever may be the rights of the States that were original parties to the Constitution, —­even granting their right to resume, for sufficient cause, those restricted powers which they delegated to the general government in trust for their own use and benefit,—­still Louisiana can have no such right, because she was acquired by purchase.  Gentlemen have not hesitated to speak of the sovereign States formed out of the territory ceded by France as property bought with the money of the United States, belonging to them as purchasers; and, although they have not carried their doctrine to its legitimate results, I must conclude that they also mean to assert, on the same principle, the right of selling for a price that which for a price was bought.

I shall not pause to comment on this repulsive dogma of a party which asserts the right of property in free-born white men, in order to reach its cherished object of destroying the right of property in slave-born black men—­still less shall I detain the Senate in pointing out how shadowy the distinction between the condition of the servile African and that to which the white freeman of my State would be reduced, if it, indeed, be true that they are bound to this government by ties that cannot be legitimately dissevered without the consent of that very majority which wields its powers for their oppression.  I simply deny the fact on which the argument is founded.  I deny that the province of Louisiana, or the people of Louisiana, were ever conveyed to the United States for a price as property that could be bought or sold at will.  Without entering into the details of the negotiation, the archives of our State Department show the fact to be, that although the domain, the public lands, and other property of France in the ceded province, were conveyed by absolute title to the United States, the sovereignty was not conveyed otherwise than in trust.