Portal:Biography/Selected article/July 25

Richard Hawes (February 6, 1797 – May 25, 1877) was a United States Representative from Kentucky and the second Confederate Governor of Kentucky. He was part of an influential political family, with a brother, uncle, and cousin who also served as U.S. Representatives. He began his political career as an ardent Whig and was a close friend of the party's founder, Henry Clay, joining the Democrats when the party declined. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Hawes was a supporter of Kentucky's doctrine of armed neutrality. fleeing to Virginia in September 1861 when that neutrality was breached. There he enlisted as a brigade commissary under Confederate general Humphrey Marshall. When Kentucky's Confederate government was formed in Russellville, Hawes was elected Confederate governor of the state when his predecessor George W. Johnson died at the Battle of Shiloh. On the arrival in Kentucky of forces under Union general Don Carlos Buell, the Confederates were driven from Kentucky following the Battle of Perryville. Hawes relocated to Virginia, where he continued to lobby President Jefferson Davis to attempt another invasion of Kentucky. After the war ended, the Confederate government of Kentucky collapsed, and Hawes returned to his home in Paris, Kentucky, swore an oath of allegiance to the Union, and returned to his law practice. He was elected county judge of Bourbon County, a post he held until his death in 1877. (Read more...)