 It was revealed , a quarter century after the war , that Benjamin and Davis had agreed for the secretary to act as scapegoat rather than reveal the shortage of arms . Not knowing this , the Richmond Examiner accused Benjamin of " stupid complacency " . Diarist Mary Chestnut recorded , " the mob calls him Mr. Davis 's pet Jew " . The Wise family never forgave Benjamin , to the detriment of his memory in Southern eyes . The general 's son , Captain Jennings Wise , fell at Roanoke Island , and Henry 's grandson John Wise , interviewed in 1936 , told Meade that " the fat Jew sitting at his desk " was to blame . Another of the general 's sons , also named John Wise , wrote a highly popular book about the South in the Civil War , The End of an Era ( 1899 ) , in which he said that Benjamin " had more brains and less heart than any other civic leader in the South ... The Confederacy and its collapse were no more to Judah P. Benjamin than last year 's birds nest . " 
