From Cheraw, Phillips rode the circuit of the local courthouses, becoming the partner of John Coit. During the controversy in South Carolina regarding the Tariff of 1832, he was among the leaders in rallying what is now known as Chesterfield County to the Union cause, in opposition to nullification. He was a member of the Nullification Convention in the Nullification Crisis of 1832 and continued to represent Chesterfield County in the South Carolina General Assembly in 1834/35. In 1835, Phillips began the practice of law at Mobile, Alabama, at a time when many South Carolinians were moving to that state. A year later, he returned to Charleston to marry Eugenia Levy, the sister of Phoebe Levy Pember. He was elected to the Alabama Legislature in 1844 and was Chairman of the Committee on Federal Relations. In 1840 and 1846, he published a digest of the decisions of the Supreme Court of Alabama, and in 1849 he was elected Chairman of the State Convention called for the purpose of promoting internal improvements. 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 1852, Phillips was elected as U.S. Representative from Alabama's 1st congressional district to the 33rd U.S. Congress. There he was closely associated with Stephen A. Douglas and 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specified that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 be "inoperative and void" for Kansas and Nebraska, but not technically repealed.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 U.S. House, 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 LaGrange, 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, D.C.. 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 U.S. Supreme Court, and appeared in over 400 cases.
Death and legacy
Phillips died January 14, 1884, in Washington, D.C. and is buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. He achieved a solid reputation as a thoughtful moderate among the leading national figures of his day. Being a Southern Unionist, he had the opportunity, according to at least one biographer, to have had a career comparable to the career of U.S. President Andrew Johnson. This was complicated by his religion, and it was made impossible by the unrestrained activities of his wife.
