Richard Hawes

Richard Hawes
2nd Confederate Governor of Kentucky
In office
May 31, 1862 – April 9, 1865
Preceded byGeorge W. Johnson
Succeeded byAbolished (end of Civil War)
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Kentucky's 10th district
In office
March 4, 1837 – March 3, 1841
Preceded byChilton Allan
Succeeded byThomas Francis Marshall
Personal details
Born(1797-02-06)February 6, 1797
Caroline County, Virginia, U.S.
DiedMay 25, 1877(1877-05-25) (aged 80)
Paris, Kentucky, U.S.
Political partyWhig
Democratic
SpouseHetty Morrison Nicholas
RelationsAlbert Gallatin Hawes (brother)
Aylett Hawes (uncle)
Aylett Hawes Buckner (uncle)
Alma materTransylvania University
Profession
  • Politician
  • lawyer

Richard Hawes Jr. (February 6, 1797 – May 25, 1877) was a United States representative from Kentucky and the second Confederate Governor of Kentucky. He was part of the politically influential Hawes family. His brother, uncle, and cousin also served as U.S. Representatives, and his grandson Harry B. Hawes was a member of the United States Senate. He was a slaveholder.[1]

Hawes began his political career as an ardent Whig and was a close friend of the party's founder, Henry Clay. When the party declined and dissolved in the 1850s, Hawes became a Democrat, and his relationship with Clay cooled.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Hawes was a supporter of Kentucky's doctrine of armed neutrality. When the Commonwealth's neutrality was breached in September 1861, Hawes fled to Virginia and enlisted as a brigade commissary under Confederate general Humphrey Marshall. When Kentucky's Confederate government was formed in Russellville, Hawes was offered the position of state auditor, but declined. Months later, he was selected to be Confederate governor of the Commonwealth following George W. Johnson's death at the Battle of Shiloh.

Hawes and the Confederate government traveled with Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee, and when Bragg invaded Kentucky in October 1862, he captured Frankfort and held an inauguration ceremony for Hawes. The ceremony was interrupted, however, by forces under Union general Don Carlos Buell, and the Confederates were driven from the Commonwealth following the Battle of Perryville. Hawes relocated to Virginia, where he conducted a Confederate government in exile for Kentucky and continued to lobby President Jefferson Davis to attempt another invasion of the state.

At the end of the war, the Confederate government of Kentucky in exile ceased to exist, and Hawes returned to his home in Paris, Kentucky. He swore an oath of allegiance to the Union, and was allowed to return to his law practice. He was elected county judge of Bourbon County, a post he held until his death in 1877.

  1. ^ Weil, Julie Zauzmer; Blanco, Adrian; Dominguez, Leo (January 20, 2022). "More than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation". Washington Post. Retrieved January 30, 2022.