When not more than
sixteen years old he had enjoyed the honor of riding Andrew Jackson's
famous steed, Truxton, in a heat race, for the largest purse ever
heard of west of the mountains, with the proud owner on one side of
the stakes. In Washington he occasionally turned an honest penny by
jockey-riding in the races on the old track of Bladensburg, and
eventually he became one of a squad of ten or twelve expert horsemen
employed by the Government in carrying urgent long-distance messages.
After much hesitation, Congress passed a joint resolution at about
five o'clock on Friday, June 18, 1812, declaring war against Great
Britain. Before sundown the express couriers were dashing swiftly on
their several courses, some toward reluctant New England, some toward
Pennsylvania and New York, some southward, some westward. To Phillips
it fell to carry the momentous news to his own Tennessee country and
thence down the Mississippi to New Orleans. That the task was
undertaken with all due energy is sufficiently attested in a letter
written by a Baptist clergyman at Lexington, North Carolina, to a
friend, who happened to have been one of Jackson's old teachers at the
Waxhaws.
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