I have finally discovered who the true identity of the "Ben Delimus" from Carl Carmer's STARS FELL ON ALABAMA. Cason misspelled his name. His real name was BEN DELEMOS and from 1865 until 1923 he was a political power, especially in Hayneville, Selma and Montgomery. When you Google his name, you get only 9 results which include ONLY HIS NAME mentioned in two books (THE SCALAWAG IN ALABAMA POLITICS and CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK POWER IN ALABAMA'S BLACK BELT) and a single post on the Web yet when you search "Ben Delemos" ALABAMA on newspapers.com, you get over 600 results from Alabama newspapers from 1876 until 1923 and they are all deal Alabama Radical Republican politician Ben DeLemos (one of Ben DeLemos sons did spell his name "DELEMUS").

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from Carl Carmer's STARS FELL ON ALABAMA:

BEN DELIMUS

Ben Delimus is a dying legend now. Only a few old-timers in Alabama, fellows who know a good story, speak of him. My friend, the late Colonol Breck Musgrove, who was a page boy in the carpetbag days at Montgomery and knew Ben well, told me about him not so long ago. And one February night in Montevallo, about a year before he died, T.W. Palmer, President of Alabama Women's College, told me just about the same tale. Here it is:

The youngest soldier in Croxton's raiding Yankees on their quick tour of Alabama was a little dark-haired black-eyed drummer. His name was Ben Delimus and he was a French Jew, born in Paris and brought over to New York when he was very young. He was about sixteen when he rode through Alabama, his drum strapped to his saddle. But he was old for his years
and his little black eyes saw many things. Among them was the dark soil beneath his horse's hoofs- promise of fertility. And in Lowndes County he looked on wide reaches of the level black land punctuated only by negro shacks and widely separated plantation homes. Then and there he resolved that when the war was over he would come back to this place.

Ben did not have much to pack into his carpetbag when he set out on his return journey. His discharge papers, probably, and his army wardrobe. He could hardly expect to buy land and wait for crops to grow on it. There is no record, however, that such considerations, even momentarily, deterred him. He went straight down to Lowndes County. Then he looked about for some means of acquiring wealth, and his genius immediately asserted itself.

The newly freed negroes were in a highly emotional state. Emancipation, no matter how their former masters might look at it, was no doubtful blessing to them. Father Abraham and General Grant had become deities no less powerful and generous that the Christian God, and somehow all three were fused in their simple minds. It was natural, then, that when Ben Delimus rode about the county announcing himself as Massa Lincoln's closest friend, and the right-hand man of the greatest Yankee war-god, they listened. Ben said he bore a message from Father Abraham to his black children. The great man in Washington was worried over their souls. A negro baptized in slavery, he said, could never hope to escape the torments of hell-fire. Such a ceremony performed when the convert was owned by a wicked slaveholder could not be expected to take effect. In fact, Ben reported Mr. Lincoln as saying, all baptisms that had taken place before the Emancipation Proclamation were null and void, and all negroes so baptized were inevitably bound for eternal torment. But there was a ray of hope. Mr. Lincoln's good friend, the bearer of the message, would be willing to save all thus exposed from the danger of the devil's grip by rebaptizing them at a dollar a head.

Mr. Lincoln's good friend did a land office business. Negroes poured out of the Big Swamp to be immersed in the muddy stream near Hayneville where Ben saved them for the Lord. They came from Bogahoma and Collirene and Big Union Church, even from Soapstone over in Dallas County. Payment was strickly in advance, to avoid the calamity of recieving Confederate money, and dollars rolled in. A great religious revival swept the county, and for weeks there were singings and visions. Then business began to let up. There was no one left to save.

But Ben had prepared for this. Immediately he delivered the second part of the Emancipator's message. It was that, for reasons similar to those stated before, all weddings that had been solemnized before his proclamation were also ineffective and participants in them were living in a state of sin. His good friend and duly appointed representative, however, would save them from the horrible consequences of such wickedness by rewedding them at the absurdly reasonable rate of a dollar a couple. Again the roads were dotted with mules and wagons on their way to the deliverer. Giggling couples paid their dollar, received his blessing, and drove away on second honeymoons. Unexpectedly for Ben a number of negroes used his announcement as authority for immediate divorce. Failures to remarry cut into his receipts, but the wedding ceremonies, while not as numerous as baptisms, brought in a tidy sum.

The fertility of Ben's inventive faculty now became more strongly evident. He was no man of a single idea to be run at last into the ground. He left the county for a week or so. When he returned he brought a carload of bottles containing a dark liquid- the first of the long line of hair straighteners for kinky heads. Ben brought with him two letters, one of which stated that the writer had observed the workings of this wonderful boon to the negro race on the curls of many of his colored friends and its straightening powers in each case had proved infallible. This letter was signed by Abraham Lincoln.

The other epistle was more laudatory than the first but stated conservatively in conclusion that should one bottle fail of its purpose, the writer had no doubt that two would be sufficient. The name subscribed was Ulysses S. Grant. Ben Delimus had somewhat unethically anticipated modern endorsement advertising by more than half a century.

The sale of the unkinking mixture at a dollar a bottle was fabulous. Ben was growing rich. Now that he was a man of popularity and influence and means, the will to power descended upon him. He felt sure that he could command much of the newly acquired negro suffrage in the county, and the successes of other carpetbaggers in the state pricked his ambition. He announced himself as a candidate for the Alabama Legislature. But other white men, envious and disapproving, had been watching Ben, and to his surprise he found a sudden and bitter opposition to his nomination. He called his negro friends for aid and they responded manfully. Still the issue was in doubt when the day of the convention dawned. It would be a close fight. Fate seemed against Ben from the start. As he and one of his henchmen were driving to the convention, they found a bridge down, destroyed by enemies to delay them. When they arrived the meeting was under way, the opposing forces had elected the chairman and were in full control, and the tribe of Ben was weakening. The chairman would not recognize their leader when he rose to speak.

"I call upon this convention to witness," thundered the little man, "that it has committed sacrilege, that unlike any past convention it has sinned against God."

There was a silence. Even Ben's enemies were a little awed by that charge.

"No convention has ever begun in Alabama," shouted Ben,"without a prayer to the Almighty for guidance. In his name I now offer that prayer."

There was no shutting him off. The chairman, well aware that all the negroes might turn against him if he ruled out a prayer, was helpless.

"O Lord," began Ben, "although the chairman of this convention obtained his position by lies and deceit, bless him and make him see the light. Although he and his friends are full of false promises although they would rob the black man and swindle the white, make them realize the truth before it is too late." On and on he went in a masterpiece of prayerful vituperation.

At last one of his enemies could stand it no longer. Rising, he leveled an accusing finger at Ben and roared out:
"Who is this who dares to accuse us? There stands one of the men who crucified our Lord."

There was a great gasp from the convention. Ben saw the black faces of his negro supporters turning away. In another moment his cause would be lost.

"It is not true," he said steadily and with rising force."Your Lord was crucified almost two thousand years ago. I am not that old. You can see that. And furthermore, if I had been there, I would have put a stop to that business."

Ben was elected. He went to Montgomery and he sat in the carpetbag legislature. He bought a nice house in Montgomery and married. He had made his money, had had his share of public favor- and he took life quietly and serenely from then on. Few of his neighbors knew of his strange past. He lived quite to himself, was happy with his wife and family. He died hardly a decade ago.