 According to Brook , " in every age , a heroic sage struggles to rescue Benjamin from obscurity — and invariably fails . " Benjamin left no memoir and destroyed his personal papers , by which " the task of future researchers and historians was made exceedingly difficult and laborious " . After his death , Benjamin was rarely written about , in contrast to Davis and other Confederate leaders . Part of this was due to Benjamin depriving his potential biographers of source material , but even Davis , in his two @-@ volume war memoir , mentions him only twice . Evans suggests that as Davis wrote the books in part to defend and memorialize his place in history , it would not have been characteristic of him to give much credit to Benjamin . Davis , in the midst of postwar business struggles , may have resented Benjamin 's success as a barrister , or may have feared that allegations of involvement in Lincoln 's assassination would again be made against the two men . Brook concurs that Benjamin 's postwar success , that began as Davis lay in prison and other Confederates struggled for survival , may have soured Southerners towards the former secretary , but that anti @-@ Semitism was also likely a factor . " For the guardians of Confederate memory after Reconstruction , Benjamin became a kind of pet Jew , generally ignored , but then trotted out at opportune moments to defend the segregated South against charges of bigotry . " 
