I need to stop complaining about Star Trek for a little while, so I started reading biographies on wikipedia. It turns out that the first three Jewish US senators were all supporters of the confederacy.

• David Levy Yulee, born in 1810, was the son of Moses Elias Levy (no relation), a Sephardi Jew from Morocco. While Moses was devoutly religious and strongly opposed to slavery, David was an ardent supporter of slavery, married a non Jew (the governors daughter) and raised his children Christian. (Although as a side note, no record of his official conversion can be found). He first served in the house in 1841, and the senate in 1845. He lost a reelection bid, but served another term that began in 1855. He resigned his seat at the outset of the civil war due to his support of the confederacy. After the war he was instrumental in the building (and then rebuilding after the war) of the Yulee railroad – Florida’s first railroad line to connect the gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic ocean. Today the town of Yulee, Florida and Levy County, Florida are named for him. He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington DC.
• Judah Benjamin was the son of religious parents and was raised in South Carolina. He attended Yale law school at age 14, and was elected a senator from Louisiana in 1852. While there he supported the cause of slavery, and was a proud plantation and slave owner. One time, Ben Wade, an abolitionist from Ohio charged Benjamin with being an “Israelite in Egyptian clothing.” Benjamin replied, “It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain.” (aw snap!) When the civil war began, Benjamin was appointed Attorney General of the confederacy, and after resigning that office, was appointed its secretary of state. He has the distinction of being the only Jew in the confederate cabinet, and even appeared on the confederate $2 bill. Seeing the shortage of southern soldiers, he put forward the idea of granting blacks their freedom in exchange for fighting on the side of the confederacy. His idea was not adopted until it was too late to save the south. There were rumors that he, along with Jefferson David, had masterminded the Lincoln assassination. Fearing he could not get a fair trial as a Jew, (especially given the allusions to Lincoln as Jesus and thus he as Judas), he fled to Britain after the civil war, and eventually died in Paris where he is now buried.
• Benjamin Jonas grew up in Louisiana and fought for the confederacy in the civil war, being promoted to the rank of major. After the war he was elected to the US senate as a Democrat. He held several other elected and appointed positions, and died in 1911. He is buried in New Orleans.

So there you have it. No matter what else happens today it wasn’t a total loss because you learned something.