Samuel Field Phillips (February 18, 1824 – November 18, 1903) was a civil rights pioneer, lawyer, politician who served as the second Solicitor General of the United States (from 1872 to 1885). He then took part in the landmark civil rights case, Plessy v. Ferguson. Early life Samuel F. Phillips was born in New York. His father, James Phillips, was a British mathematician. When Samuel was about two years of age his father became the first professor of mathematics at the newly formed University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and the family moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Education Samuel Phillips graduated from UNC with highest honors in 1841, earning a master's degree three years later. He began his own law practice in North Carolina and joined the UNC law department as a tutor before embarking on a career in politics, beginning with his election as a Whig to the North Carolina General Assemblies of 1852 and 1854. Phillips served on North Carolina's state North Carolina Court of Claims in 1861, and as state auditor from 1862-1864. Political career Phillips had been an opponent of secession and during the U.S. Civil War he became a member of the "Peace Party" of newspaper publisher William Woods Holden (1818–1892), whose 1863 "peace meetings" across North Carolina urged the state to stop fighting the Civil War. In 1864, Phillips was re-elected to the General Assembly, serving as Speaker of the House in 1866. He was a member of the first "Reconstruction Convention," and joined the Republican Party, which earned him much condemnation as a "scalawag." He fought for the expansion of legal rights for African-Americans, triumphing in granting freedmen the right to testify in cases in which they were parties. In 1866 Phillips left politics to return to the private practice of law. In the Fall of 1867 he moved his family to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he became North Carolina's Supreme Court Reporter. He returned to politics in 1870. In 1871, Phillips served another term in the North Carolina House of Representatives. In 1872, Phillips was appointed the second U.S. Solicitor General by President Ulysses S. Grant, serving in this position from November 1872 to May 1885. During Phillips's twelve and one-half years as solicitor general, he served under four presidents: Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur. Phillips argued the constitutionality of the 1871 Enforcement Act and advocated upholding a conviction