Early Life and Civil War
Hawkins was born in Bath County, Kentucky, the eldest of thirteen children of John Hawkins and Mary (Ralston) Hawkins. When he was four, his parents moved to Maury County, Tennessee, and two years later moved to Carroll County. Hawkins attended McLemoresville Academy and Bethel College, and was taught farming and blacksmithing by his father. He eventually turned to law, however, which he studied while earning money teaching school. He read law under Judge Benjamin Totten, and was admitted to the bar in 1843. He briefly practiced with his cousin, Isaac R. Hawkins, before establishing his own practice in Huntingdon.
A Whig, Hawkins first ran for a seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1845, but was unsuccessful. He ran again in 1853, and this time was successful, but he served only one term and did not seek reelection. He campaigned against secession in the late 1850s, and supported Constitutional Union Party candidate John Bell, who opposed secession and took a neutral stance on the issue of slavery, in the presidential election of 1860. While many anti-secession Tennessee Whigs switched their support to the Confederacy after the Battle of Fort Sumter, Hawkins remained staunchly pro-Union for the duration of the Civil War.
In December 1862, after the Union Army had regained control of much of West Tennessee, the state's military governor, Andrew Johnson, called for congressional elections to be held in its 9th and 10th congressional districts. Hawkins was elected to the 9th district seat, but the House of Representatives deemed his vote total (1,900) to be too low in proportion to his district's population (18,000), and refused to seat him. He spent the next few months scouting West Tennessee to gather information for the state's military authorities. In 1864, he was appointed United States Attorney for West Tennessee by President Abraham Lincoln.
In 1865, Hawkins was appointed to the Tennessee Supreme Court by Governor William G. Brownlow. He served alongside J.O. Shackleford and Sam Milligan. Among the cases the court decided during his tenure was Ridley v. Sherbrook, in which the court upheld the Brownlow administration's strict voting requirements. He resigned in 1868, and briefly served as U.S. Consul to Havana, Cuba. Later that year, the state legislature, responding to irritation over Brownlow's court appointees, called for elections to choose new justices to the court. Hawkins was among the Republican nominees, and since most Democrats were still disfranchised, he was elected. His term ended, however, with the enactment of the new Tennessee State Constitution in 1870, and he returned to his law practice in Huntingdon.
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