 | Philip Phillips: Encyclopedia II - Philip Phillips - Civil War
Philip Phillips - Civil War
A delegate to the 1852 Democratic National Convention at Baltimore, Maryland, Phillips gave a speech in support of Franklin Pierce who received the nomination. In 1853, Phillips was elected to the 33rd U.S. House of Representatives. There he was largely responsible for the final language of the portion of the notorious Kansas-Nebraska Act that specified that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 be "inoperative and void" for Kansas and Nebraska, but not technically repealed. In his memoirs Phillips recognized that this action probably "hastened the crises of 1861."
Phillips declined reelection to Congress but remained at Washington, and continued his legal practice there. When the Civil War began he, being a Unionist, attempted to remain. However, his wife, Eugenia was quite obviously a Southern sympathizer, and allegedly a Confederate spy. In August 1861, U.S. soldiers entered his house, confiscated his papers, arrested his wife and older daughters, and imprisoned them at the home of Mrs. Rose Greenhow. Fortunately, he had previously secured the friendship of Edwin M. Stanton, later Secretary of War, who, aided by other prominent Union leaders, arranged for their parole and transportation to the South. After a harrowing trip and a supposed delivery of information to President Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders in Richmond, Virginia, they passed on to Savannah, Georgia and ultimately to the expected safety of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Within a few months, New Orleans was captured by Admiral David Farragut and General Benjamin Butler. Soon his wife, Eugenia, accused of failing to show proper respect to a soldier's passing funeral cortege, was arrested again and sent to a prison on Ship Island for three months. Upon her release in October 1862, again securing permission to leave Union-held territory, the family purchased a small house at La Grange, Georgia where they lived for the remainder of the war.
After the war Phillips resumed his law practice, first in New Orleans and finally in 1867, after the Supreme Court voided the Test Oath of 1862, in Washington. There he gradually became one of the leaders of the Bar, drawing most of his clients from the South. He generally practiced as a lawyer's lawyer, almost entirely before the Supreme Court, and appeared in over 400 cases.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Civil War", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
