his lectures but, of course, did not know
the whole truth. Over time, James became
quite religious and was ordained as a minister. His zeal for preaching to anyone he
could corral was well-known; folks were
known to dart into hiding when they saw
him coming down the street.
Julia Phillips apparently was not as enthusiastic about Chapel Hill as her husband. She
was, after all, living in a Southern backwater,
a world apart from New York and New Jersey. Julia spent a lot of time during her marriage back North and was away in March
1867 when James, 75, died in Person Hall. A
student found him there, shortly before the
beginning of geometry class. Julia was not
eager to come back to Chapel Hill even for
her husband’s funeral, and Cornelia had to
persuade her mother to return.
James remained a well-respected member of the UNC faculty and the Chapel
Hill community. No one knew the true
story of his past until the middle of the
20th century, when some Phillips family
descendants decided to take a trip to England to visit churches in St. Gomonda and
Nevendon, near London, where James’
father, Richard, also had been vicar.
One can only imagine their surprised
confusion when they saw no record at the
churches for a Reverend Richard Phillips.
For the years that Richard Phillips was
supposed to be the vicar, the name of
Richard Postlethwaite was inscribed on the
church walls.
After that family visit to England, James’
story about his past began unraveling, and
the truth about his identity, education and
desertions of wife, children and the military
came out.
The government’s lawyer
By the middle of the 19th century, Sam
Phillips was a Chapel Hill favorite son, doing
everything expected of him. And if he had
kept to that script he might have been written into North Carolina’s law and history
books after all. But Phillips took an unpopular stand during Reconstruction that made
him a traitor to his state.
Phillips grew up in Chapel Hill, married the granddaughter of a former governor, shared top honors in his undergraduate class with brother Charles, received
bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UNC,
read the law under UNC President David
Swain (class of 1825, who is described as
having been like a second father to
Phillips) and William H. Battle, and practiced and taught law in Chapel Hill. His
law office doubled as a school where he
taught Latin, Greek, math, geography, history and English grammar to boys.
By most measures of success, Phillips,
known around town as “Mister Sam,” had
everything.
His mentors were prominent Whigs, and
that affiliation served him well through the
war. But as Reconstruction set in, Phillips
had a change of heart, and mind. As Phillips
Russell (class of 1904), a UNC professor of
creative writing, explained in These Old
Stone Walls, “To Mr. Phillips … the Repub-
lican Party was the party of union and
progress, and he told his friends he could
not stomach the ‘corruption and extrava-
gance’ of the Democratic Party which was
replacing the upper-class Whigs.”
He’d not always felt strongly about
black suffrage, and he admitted it.
PHO TOS BY DONNA LEFEBVRE ’ 75; NORTH CAROLINA COLLEC TION, ABOVE
layed into dubious credentials as head of a school for boys in Harlem and later as a math professor at Carolina. These
details of the family that begat Chapel Hill’s famous Phillipses were unknown until the mid-20th century.
CAROLINA ALUMNI REVIEW
47
