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The Fifteenth Kansas Cavalry, Company C, was recruited in Leavenworth,
Jefferson and Miami counties, and entered the service with the following
officers: Captain, B. F. Simpson; 1st Lieutenant, J. H. Phillips; 2nd
Lieutenant, Jason Smith, succeeded by Q. M. Sergeant Farnsworth. This
Regiment dates its origin to the Lawrence Massacre of 21 August 1863, in
which 143 unarmed and unsuspecting people were murdered, and the business
portion of the town was reduced to ashes. The regiment was recruited for
the express purpose of protecting the eastern border of Kansas. Company C
mustered out on 19 October 1865, at the close of the Civil War (Regimental
Histories, Page 1185). According to the muster roll, Joseph entered as
First Lieutenant on 18 September 1863, and resigned on 20 May 1865.
After the war, Joseph returned to Paola, where he engaged in carpentry and
construction. In the spring of 1869 he moved to a farm near Wild Creek school
house in Stanton Township, where he appears as a farmer in the 1870 census.
In the fall of 1874 he moved to Kansas City, but returned to Paola in 1878 and
lived there for the rest of his life. In the 1880 census he is listed as a
stock dealer. Twice more, in 1883 and 1885, he was elected County Treasurer,
after which he engaged in the real estate business. Joseph Harmon Phillips
died of a stroke of paralysis on 4 February 1907 and is buried in Paola
Cemetery. In his eulogy, it was said that “to the poor, the oppressed, and
unfortunate he was always kind, tender and patient ... He detested a coward,
hated a hypocrite, and loathed what he called a sham reformer.”
“Though coming from a southern State, he was always an ardent Republican,
and at an early day in Paola, when most men were afraid to declare for a
Free State, he was outspoken, and he and his brother, James Phillips, George
Tomlinson, A. J. Shannon, B. F. Simpson, and E. W. Robinson were six of the
seven men who dared to cast their votes for the Free State ticket at an
election in Paola during the trying times on the Kansas and Missouri border.”
Joseph’s brother, James A. Phillips, was born in Randolph County, North
Carolina, in 1835. After settling in Paola in 1857, he studied law with
Benjamin F. Simpson, and was admitted to the Lykins (Miami) County bar in
1860. James is listed in the 1860 United States census for Paola Village,
Lykins County, Kansas as an attorney, at the age of 25. On 22 March 1858 he
was elected Lykins County Supervisor. On 6 December 1859 he was elected
Senator in the Kansas Territorial Legislature (the vote was 779 to 475), and
he served in the first State Legislature after Kansas achieved statehood on
29 January 1861. He resigned on 16 July 1861 to join the army, being
commissioned First Lieutenant and Adjutant of the Fourth Kansas Infantry
(later consolidated with the third to form the Tenth Kansas Infantry). His
date of muster was 24 July 1861. On 10 July 1862 he was promoted to Major of
the First Indian Regiment (also known as the Home Guards). He is listed in
the Adjutant General’s Report as an officer “commissioned by the President.”
SOURCES: Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society, Vol. X, 1907-
1908, Page 242, and Vol. V, 1896, Page 492; Annals of Kansas, 1886, Pages
288, 314, 337, 338-339; Adjutant General’s Report, State of Kansas, Page 9.
The Indian Home Guard consisted of three regiments: The First (Creek and
Seminole); the Second (Osage, Quapaw, Delaware, Kickapoo, Seneca, Shawnee,
and Cherokee); and the Third (Cherokee). Four of the “Five Civilized Tribes”
(Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Creek) who had been forcibly removed along
the “Trail of Tears” to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) owned Negro slaves.
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