His detention in Arkansas was not at all to Phillips’s liking.  It tried his patience sorely; for he felt the crying need of Indian Territory for just such services as his and, try as he would, he could not visualize that of Arkansas.  Eagerly he watched for a chance to return to the Cherokee country.  One offered for the fifth of March but had to be given up.  Again and yet again in letters[731] to Curtis and Blunt he expostulated against delay but delay could not well be avoided.  The pressure from Arkansas for assistance was too great.  Blunt sympathized with Phillips more than he dared openly admit and tacitly sanctioned his advance.  Never at any time could there have been the slightest doubt as to the singleness of the virile Scotchman’s purpose.  In imagination he saw his adopted country repossessed of Indian Territory and of all the overland approaches to Texas and Mexico from whence, as he supposed, the Confederacy expected to draw her grain and other supplies.  Some regard for the Indian himself he doubtless had; but he used it as a means to the greater end.  His sense of justice was truly British in its keenness.

[Footnote 730:  Ross to Dole, April 2, 1863 [Indian Office General Files, Cherokee, 1859-1865, R 87]; Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Report, 1863, p. 23; Britton, Civil War on the Border, vol. ii, 24-25; Moore, Rebellion Record, vol. vi, 50; Eaton, John Ross and the Cherokee Indians, 196.]

[Footnote 731:  Britton [Civil War on the Border, vol. ii, 27] conveys the idea that, while Phillips, truly enough, wished to enter the Indian country at the earliest day practicable, he did not care to go there before the Indian ponies could “live on the range.”  He knew that the refugees at Neosho would insist upon following in his wake.  It would be heartless to expose them to starvation and to the ravages of diseases like the small-pox.  Nevertheless, the correspondence of Phillips, scattered through the Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, 121-367, shows conclusively that the weeks of waiting were weary ones.]

His Indian soldiers loved him.  They believed in him.  He was able to accomplish wonders in training them.  He looked after their welfare and he did his best to make the government and its agents of the Indian Office keep faith with the refugees.  Quite strenuously, too, he advocated further enlistments from among the Indians, especially from among those yet in Indian Territory.  If the United States did not take care, the Confederates would successfully conscript where the Federals might easily recruit.  In this matter as in many another, he had Blunt’s unwavering support; for Blunt wanted the officers of the embryo fourth and fifth regiments to secure their commands.  Blunt’s military district was none too full of men.