Isaac R. Hawkins

Isaac Hawkins fought for the Union and then voted against Black suffrage. Lieutenant colonel of the 7th Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry from 1862, he was captured with his regiment at Union City in 1864, exchanged that August, and commanded the cavalry in western Kentucky until the war ended. Elected to Congress in 1865 as an Unconditional Unionist, then as a Republican, he served until 1871. He was one of three House Republicans to oppose the first version of the Fifteenth Amendment and one of four to oppose the final version. His cousin Alvin became governor.

What the plaque says

Isaac R. Hawkins Born in Maury Co., he was an officer of volunteers in the Mexican War. A lifelong staunch Unionist, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Union Party convention of 1860, later an officer in the Federal Army. A delegate to the Republican convention of 1868 he was later a member of the 39th, 40th & 41st Congresses of the United States. He is buried here.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 15 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Natchez Trace State Park — 20 mi
  A New Deal state park built on worn-out West Tennessee farmland, where the Fairfield Gullies show what erosion did and kudzu was planted to stop it.
• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 26 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.
• Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge — 29 mi
  A 51,000-acre refuge along Kentucky Lake and the Tennessee River, created in 1945 for migratory birds, with a visitor center in Springville and a drowned Archaic site nearby.

More markers nearby

• Hale Junior High School — 2.5 mi
• Site of B-17 Crash — 9.5 mi
• Governor Alvin Hawkins — 9.6 mi
• Parker's Crossroads — 12 mi