everything else in proportion; curving stairways of mahogany, massive carved decorations, silver-plated doorknobs, extensive rose gardens between the house and the levee, and an enormous bell into which Benjamin was said to have dropped five hundred silver dollars during the melting, to 'sweeten the tone.' " Though Benjamin continued to practice his legal profession, he devoted great interest to his plantation, unlike the typical absentee landlord, and wrote articles and
14 Jews and Negro Slavery in the Old South, 1789-1865
delivered speeches on the problems of sugar-planting. Bellechasse was staffed with one hundred and forty slaves, of whom about eighty were field-hands. Benjamin sold the plantation after his election to the Senate.3
Another well-known Jewish planter was Major Raphael J. Moses who owned land at Esquiline Hill, near Columbus, Georgia. Moses, who became Chief Commissary Officer of Longstreet's Corps during the war, wrote in his memoirs that
when the war broke out, I had forty-seven slaves, and when it ended I had forty-seven freedmen — all left me except one, old London, who staid with me until he died.4
Other Jewish planters were: Nathan Nathans, who was a President of Beth Elohim Congregation of Charleston, South Carolina, with a plantation on the Cooper River; Isaiah Moses, who worked thirtyfive slaves on his farm at St. James, Goose Creek, South Carolina; Mordecai Cohen, who had twenty-seven slaves on his plantation at St. Andrews, South Carolina, and his two sons Marx and David, both of whom owned nearby farms; Isaac Lyons, of Columbia, South Carolina; Bamet A. Cohen of King's Creek, South Carolina; and Chapman Levy, who turned from the law to planting when he moved to the Mississippi Territory. Various members of the Mordecai family had plantations in