The Hunt for Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin in London
Two years after the Civil War guns went silent, Secretary of State, William H. Seward sent former Union Bureau of Military Intelligence, General George H. Sharpe, to London on a secret mission. His quarry? Former Confederate Secretary of State, Judah P. Benjamin, who had fled the rubble of the ruined South to freedom, and reinvention in England. Come to our October meeting, and hear Civil War scholar, Jane Singer, and investigative journalist, Jay Solomon tell this little- known story, long buried in the archives of the Library of Congress.

Jane Singer
Jane Singer is a tale spinner, a Civil War scholar and author of fiction and nonfiction. Her fixed and firm mission is bringing to life heroes and heroines, assassins, and conmen, both real and imagined, in a long-ago war that has an eerie resonance in our own troubled time.
Her nonfiction works include:
1. The War Criminal’s Son: The Civil War Saga of William A. Winder, (Potomac Books, 2019)
2. Lincoln’s Secret Spy: The Civil War Case That Changed The Future of Espionage (Lyons Press, April 2015)
3. The Confederate Dirty War: Arson, Bombings, Assassination and Plots for Chemical and Germ Attacks Against the Union (McFarland & Company, August, 2005)
Singer’s fiction works include:
1. Falcon: A Civil War Spy Fiction, (KDP, 2024)
2. Alias Dragonfly, (Bell Bridge Books, 2011)
3. Booth’s Sister (Bell Bridge Books, 2008.)
In November of 2006, the History Channel based a two-hour special called Civil War Terror on her book. Singer was both the historical consultant for the project, as well as the primary on screen narrator. Her writing has been featured in the Washington Post Magazine (“The Fiend in Gray”), The Washington Times (“Felix Stidger and the Sons of Liberty”). Her research and discovery of Stidger; a little-known American hero, was illuminated in a Chicago Sun-Times article. Singer is also a professional actor, voice-over artist, narrator and self-defense instructor to challenged teens and adults. Raised in Arlington, Virginia, she now lives in Los Angeles, California.

Jay Solomon
Jay Solomon is one of the U.S.’s premier investigative journalists and writers, with a global track record that goes back nearly 30 years. He was The Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign affairs correspondent for over a decade, during which he broke some of Washington’s largest stories, such as the Obama administration’s secret cash shipments to Iran. He also served tours in the Middle East, India, and East Asia. He’s an expert on international sanctions, illicit finance, nuclear proliferation, and cyber warfare.