Phillips came close to greatness as a historian, perhaps as close and any historian this country has produced. We may leave to those who live in the world of absolute good and evil the task of explaining how a man with such primitive views of fundamental social questions could write such splendid history. . . . He asked more and better questions than many of us still are willing to admit, and he carried on his investigations with consistent freshness and critical intelligence. . . . American Negro Slavery is not the last word on its subject; merely the indispensable first. - Eugene D. Genovese