Francis L. Hawks - Scandal and Later Life

Scandal and Later Life

In late 1838, Hawks became one of many targets of a trend among the American penny press to expose the alleged vices of holy men. The accuser was George Washington Dixon, a man best known for his blackface music act, who claimed that Hawks was engaging in sexual affairs. Hawks charged Dixon with libel on 31 December 1838. After a heated trial, Dixon pled guilty on 10 and 11 May 1839. The reasons for this remain a mystery, though Dale Cockrell surmises that Hawks likely did not want to face further defamation of character in trial and may have paid Dixon off; Dixon himself claimed as much in 1841. Even mainstream newspaper had begun to turn on him at this point; the New York Weekly Herald wrote that " may explain and explain till doomsday—but these facts and their inferences adhere."

Another scandal erupted closer to home. Hawks had opened a boys' school in 1839 in Flushing, Long Island. The school had financial difficulties and was failing within three years, and Hawks was accused of mismanaging the funds. This proved one scandal too many. Hawks resigned from St. Thomas Church on 21 October 1843.

Over the next decade, Hawks bounced from church to church. He first moved to a church in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on the American frontier and far from the disgrace of New York. There he went to work starting another school. At the Mississippi Diocesan Convention of 1844, Hawks took center stage due primarily to his endeavors to create a Diocesan school. When the Convention called for the election of the Diocese's first bishop, Hawks was tapped. His episcopal confirmation at the General Convention was protested, with James Quarterman, a painter from Flushing, NY, alleging that Hawks had over $100,000 in outstanding debt due to financial mismanagement at St. Thomas. Though Hawks successfully defended himself and the General Convention expressed their support for him, they discharged his consent back to the Diocese of Mississippi. In the end, Hawks turned the post down. He instead moved to Christ Church in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1847, he was named the first president of the University of Louisiana, known today as Tulane University. Then in 1849, he returned to New York City to pastor Calvary Church. He stayed there until 1862. Hawks declined most non-clerical appointments during his time at Calvary, including an election to the Rhode Island episcopate in 1852 and a professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1859. He continued to write, and in 1855 and 1856 he co-authored the Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan with Commodore Matthew Perry.

During the American Civil War, Hawks moved to Calvary parish in Baltimore, Maryland. By 1861 he was editing again, this time with William Stevens Perry on the Journal of the General Conventions. He began as editor of Documentary History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1863 and held the post until 1864. He later gave the endowment for St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery Chair of Ecclesiastical History at the General Seminary. He returned once more to New York City in 1865, where he helped to start the Chapel of the Holy Saviour on 25th Street. Another project was a Spanish-speaking church called Iglesia de Santiago, where Hawks preached on occasion. Hawks died in 26 September 1866. He is buried at Christ Church in Greenwich, Connecticut.