Abraham Lincoln and “the Most Dangerous Man” in Baltimore

Abraham Lincoln and “the Most Dangerous Man” in Baltimore

Sean A. Scott

Francis Lister Hawks was a distinguished clergyman and man of letters whose southern sympathies during the Civil War brought him to the attention of Abraham Lincoln. Born in 1798 in Newbern, North Carolina, Hawks graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1815, pursued a career in law, and served a term in the state legislature. In his late twenties he began studying for the ministry, received ordination, and eventually settled into a twelve-year-long pastorate at St. Thomas Church in Queens County, New York. Regularly drawing large crowds to hear him preach, the hard-working clergyman also taught seminary classes, compiled records of Episcopal church history, and wrote children’s books and poetry, including one entitled “To an Old and Very Cheerful Christian Lady.” When this much-admired woman asked him to “make sense of” her husband’s “thousands of pages of writings,” he edited The Official and Other Papers of the Late Major-General Alexander Hamilton. However, in 1843 financial troubles stemming from a short-lived boys’ school prompted his resignation and relocation to the South, where he served churches in Mississippi and New Orleans, turned down an appointment as Bishop of Mississippi, and became the first president of Louisiana College (now Tulane University). His reputation repaired, in 1849 he returned to New York City and the following year accepted the rectorship of Calvary Church in Manhattan with an annual salary of $5,000 and a promise by the vestry to pay off his remaining debt. During the 1850s the church thrived under his oversight, and he earned the sincere respect of his Episcopal colleagues and heartfelt gratitude of his congregation.

When the nation fractured and civil war ensued, Hawks staked out a conservative position and never wavered in his convictions. During the secession winter he faulted both North and South for the nation’s turmoil and avoided mentioning slavery as a cause of strife. “Our duty as Christians is to speak peace,” he proclaimed in a fast day sermon on January 4, 1861, as he urged his listeners to bombard their representatives and senators with petitions and letters demanding that Congress avoid war. Once fighting began, the rumors swirled—that he refused to follow the prayer book and pray for President Lincoln; that he fled to the South; and that he “committed numerous other improper and unpatriotic acts.” Although the Democratic New York Express scoffed at such allegations, it admitted that Hawks favored “concession and conciliation,” a position derived from his North Carolina roots.

By March 1862 an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Hawks was stirring among congregants who objected to his public indifference, if not personal hostility, to the Union. One disgruntled vestryman complained to William R. Whittingham, bishop of Maryland, that Hawks was “among the suspected, if not acknowledged enemies of the Government of the United States.” He made his case based on Hawks’s “sympathies” for “his relatives and ‘countrymen’ in North Carolina.” In fact, earlier that year the rector’s son Francis T. Hawks, who had worked as an assistant superintending engineer on the construction of Manhattan’s Central Park, joined the Confederate army as an aide-de-camp and participated in the Battle of New Bern on March 14. One week after the capture of his hometown, Hawks submitted his resignation to the wardens and vestry of Calvary Church, citing “[God’s] will” and declining health as his reasons. The New York papers hit closer to the mark when they discerned political differences as the cause, but the Times nevertheless defended Hawks’s conduct as rector. “He has not so obtruded his private political opinions upon his people as to give offence,” a statement backed in the main by the vestry’s refusal to accept his resignation because a majority of pewholders and New York bishop Horatio Potter desired him to continue as rector. The astute Hawks would never demean his office by expressing from the pulpit personal opinions about the war, yet omitting “the prayer prescribed by the Bishop for the success of our arms and the protection of our troops” constituted a political act as much as the former. The unsought groundswell of support blocking his planned exit compelled him to come clean, albeit obliquely. “I conscientiously believe,” he maintained, that the resignation “embraces in it certain great and vital principles which I have no right to surrender.” In other words, he refused to bow to “the dictation of men” regarding what he should preach or pray. Furthermore, he valued his “rights as a man and an American” to hold private opinions, for certainly he did not forfeit them simply by being a clergyman. Perhaps feeling a tad sanctimonious, he appealed to Scripture to justify his course. “If they persecute you in one City, flee ye to another,” he paraphrased Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:23, and he followed that admonition, taking refuge in the seemingly safer confines of southern sympathizing Baltimore.

By autumn 1862 Hawks had settled in nicely at Christ Church, reportedly drawing “overflowing” audiences. Although he did not preach politics, everyone knew that he favored the South, which he clearly demonstrated by refusing to read the recently adopted pastoral letter that condemned the southern rebellion in no uncertain terms. By 1863 his reputation was cinched. Republican newspapers described him as “a rebel sympathizer of the extreme kind.” Southerners, in contrast, could be confident that “the South has no truer friend than Dr. Hawks.” Indeed, a Southern Baptist pastor who was permitted to leave Baltimore shared a conversation in which the Episcopalian had fervently proclaimed, “All North Carolinians, male or female, who are true to Southern independence[,] are kin to me.”

On Tuesday, May 10, 1864, several vestrymen from Christ Church gained an audience with Abraham Lincoln. They informed the president that their beloved rector, who had traveled to New York City in April, was not permitted to return to Baltimore, and they sought an explanation for his banishment. Lincoln, of course, knew nothing about their dilemma and likely had never even heard of Francis Hawks. Nevertheless, he good-naturedly complied with their request to sort out the matter and telegraphed Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace, who two months previously had been placed in Baltimore as commander of the Middle Department and the Eighth Army Corps. “Please tell me what is the trouble with Dr. Hawks,” Lincoln queried, then added, “Also, please ask Bishop Whittington to give me his views of the case.” The delegation may have name-dropped the bishop of Maryland, but the president already knew that Whittingham would offer an unvarnished opinion on the matter, even if he often misspelled the bishop’s surname. He certainly valued the patriotic support that Whittingham had consistently given his policies and once had written, “I need not tell the Sec. of the Treasury or any of the Heads of Departments, who Bishop Whittington is.”

Likely expecting a protest from Hawks’s defenders, Wallace dutifully complied with his commander in chief’s request the following day and personally conveyed the message to Whittingham, who to that point “knew nothing about the affair” either. However, rather than giving a straightforward response to Lincoln’s question, Wallace instead provided a highly speculative preface on “the peculiarities of secessionism in Baltimore.” “Out of the multitude of letters captured on the way to ‘Dixie,’” Wallace began, seemingly off topic, “not one is from a man—they are all from women.” At first glance, he reasoned, it seemed normal for ladies to communicate with loved ones in the South, but the “intense and malignant hate of the Govt.” contained therein proved that these missives were more than familial chitchat. Unable to acknowledge that women might form their own political opinions based on their circumstances, backgrounds, or ideology, the general instead concluded that they developed their treasonable ideas by listening “to the teachings of certain Ministers of the Gospel, whom I have watched and reported, Dr. Hawks being one of the number.” The conspiracy only deepened when he erroneously claimed that Hawks had purposefully been “imported by the disloyalists to make fight, in a spiritual way,” against A. Cleveland Coxe, the “devoted Unionist” rector of Grace Church, and had in fact replaced him. Finally giving accurate information about Hawks, Wallace admitted that the rector “never says anything exceptionable,” which allowed his supporters to “carry their entreaties to yr. Excellency. They honestly believe him all right, while I feel a positive assurance that he is all wrong.”

To prove to Lincoln that Hawks was a dangerous individual, Wallace enumerated four reasons why the Episcopalian rector could no longer be ignored. Hawks “insidiously” stoked his congregation’s opposition to the government through his “talents” and “influence”; his disloyal members wanted him to replace Whittingham as the next bishop of Maryland; he never publicly supported the government; and he had written and circulated a pamphlet to encourage Baltimore’s “reliable disloyalists”—an elusive document “Union people never get to see.” The general gathered this information from sources who were “numerous,” personally devout, politically sound, and Episcopalian—credentials that in his mind rendered them more reliable than Hawks’s supporters who had visited the president. However, he had promised to keep their identities secret, so Lincoln had to trust his judgment. Finally leaving the realm of speculation and insinuation, Wallace informed Lincoln that he had merely ordered his provost marshal to require that Hawks swear an oath of allegiance or vacate Baltimore within twenty-four hours, a seemingly easy task for any loyal citizen. The minister’s continued absence confirmed to Wallace that he had acted prudently and unmasked a traitor who could never swear the oath in good conscience. Instead, the threatened oath had eliminated Hawks’s pernicious influence from Baltimore and would serve as a warning to other “disaffected” clergymen. Having made his case, the general implored Lincoln to sustain his action, effectively removing Hawks and rendering “a happy end” to a “disagreeable” situation.

Considering the flimsy evidence offered by Wallace, Bishop Whittingham’s assessment may have carried significant weight in shaping Lincoln’s thinking about the religious and political ramifications of the case. Although the bishop personally preferred to avoid any involvement, he could not ignore the president’s desire for his input. In his mind, Wallace had not violated Hawks’s “religious freedom” because he had not obtruded military authority into church affairs by specifically stipulating what a clergyman could or could not say in public worship. In effect, Whittingham accepted the general’s prerogative to act as “the responsible guardian” of the public interest and feared that countermanding the order would undermine respect for Wallace’s policies and authority. However, if Wallace had conferred with him first, he would have advised, based on both “personal and official interests,” to leave Hawks alone, despite the “sufficient grounds” that Wallace claimed existed. Far from a ringing endorsement, Whittingham ultimately deferred to military authority while suggesting that the imbroglio was both unnecessary and avoidable. With both letters in hand, Lincoln took a couple days to mull over how to respond and simply wrote on the envelope, “Gen. Wallace—Bishop Whittingham.”

In the past Lincoln had dealt with Border State ministers in similar situations. The most well-known case involved Samuel McPheeters, a Presbyterian pastor in St. Louis who was banished from Missouri despite having taken an oath of allegiance. After McPheeters and Attorney General Edward Bates personally met with Lincoln in late 1862, the president concluded that the clergyman indeed “sympathizes with rebels” and “exercises rebel influence.” However, McPheeters had not committed any illegal acts against the government, and Lincoln questioned whether or not it was appropriate for a general to exile an oath-taking citizen “of unquestioned good moral character” merely “upon suspicion of his secret sympathies.” He ultimately concluded that the field commander knew the situation best and should have authority to act in whatever way necessary to secure “the public good.” Nevertheless, in allowing this latitude Lincoln stipulated that “the U.S. government must not . . . undertake to run the churches,” essentially telling the military to interfere as little as possible with church matters. On April 4, 1864—only five weeks before the issue with Hawks arose—in response to an order by Gen. William S. Rosecrans that required an oath of allegiance from anyone attending a denominational convention or similar assembly of clergymen in Missouri, Lincoln perceptively observed, “I have found that men who have not even been suspected of disloyalty, are very averse to taking an oath of any sort as a condition, to exercising an ordinary right of citizenship.” Even though he “somewhat dread[ed] the effect” Rosecrans’s order would have, he allowed it to stand. With this precedent already established, consistency required him to back Wallace, even if he found the order unwarranted. “I was very anxious to avoid new excitements at places where quiet seemed to be restored,” wrote Lincoln; “but after reading, and considering, your letter and inclosure, I have to say I leave you to act your careful discretion in the matter.”

Wallace certainly had reason to be pleased with his commander in chief’s response, but in certain respects it proved to be a pyrrhic victory after all. Targeting Hawks was not an isolated decision but part of a larger agenda to uproot secessionist sentiment and punish disloyal civilians throughout the Middle Department. On the same day that he ordered Hawks to take the oath, he issued General Orders No. 30, which prevented individuals who had vacated the area to help the South from collecting any rents, interest, or other financial profits from the use of their property or assets left behind. A few days later he asked the War Department for permission to declare martial law in several counties in Delaware and along the Eastern Shore of Maryland because of “the prevalence of disloyal and traitorous sentiments” there that facilitated the activities of Confederate spies, recruitment for the Rebel army, and contraband trade. However, on May 9 Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton emphatically quashed the proposed martial law enactment and scribbled “Not Approved” in his characteristically dark script. Complaints about General Orders No. 30 eventually reached Edward Bates, who scolded Wallace on May 25 because his first knowledge of the order came from a clipped copy from a Baltimore newspaper. “After conversation with the President and with his knowledge and permission,” the attorney general explained to Wallace that his order was not only bad policy but “assumes a very large power over persons, contracts, and property purely civil . . . over which the military has no lawful authority.” To redirect the general to the legal path, Bates enclosed copies of Lincoln’s orders giving him, as attorney general, the authority to superintend enforcement of the Confiscation Acts passed by Congress—a not-so-subtle hint that Wallace should revoke his poorly conceived directive. The general instead doubled down and on May 30 claimed that General Orders No. 30 and a related, explanatory order constituted “necessary powers” fully in keeping with the Confiscation Acts and “certain laws of war.” Insistent that he had acted “from a sense of duty,” Wallace politely refused to annul the orders and requested Bates to share his response with Lincoln.

On June 11 Bates met with the president to discuss Wallace’s orders. After showing Lincoln their correspondence, he unequivocally asserted that the orders were unlawful and violated Lincoln’s previous instructions. Moreover, he considered Wallace’s “letter of justification” from May 30 to be “wor[s]e than the orders, in that it avowed the illegal act, knowingly done, and defended it, upon grounds the most absurd.” After studying the papers, on June 13 Lincoln directed Bates to give them to Stanton, who would order Wallace to revoke the offensive edicts. Later that day Bates found Stanton in a bad mood and, after discussing the situation with him, concluded that his colleague “evidently hates to give the order.” Bates seemingly misread the temperamental Stanton, or perhaps the latter needed further convincing from Lincoln. Whatever the case, that same day he sent Wallace a pointed rebuke from the commander in chief. “The President directs me to inform you . . . that in issuing these orders without his instructions, you have transcended the power vested in you.” Emphatically underscoring that Wallace had not only acted dictatorially but had foolishly defended such abuse, Stanton continued, “He instructs me also to say to you, that the authority claimed to be exercised by you in these orders is a power vested in him alone, and only to be exercised by a subordinate officer when directed to do so by the President.” Lincoln demanded that the offensive orders be “absolutely annulled” and warned Wallace that henceforth he needed to gain approval prior to issuing similar orders. Duly reprimanded, on June 14 a submissive Wallace telegraphed his dutiful compliance.

In the meantime, Hawks decided to remain in New York City until a favorable breakthrough. The newspapers reported his prolonged absence because of a summons from the provost marshal, but the public lacked further details beyond a vestryman’s statement that Hawks feared banishment to the South if he returned to Baltimore. After it became clear that the delegation to Lincoln had failed in its mission, the vestrymen, worried about the church’s finances without their popular rector, wondered how to proceed. Hawks was not much help and readily admitted, “Recent events have been so like a dream, that I have hardly found myself able to compose my thoughts, and form a sober judgment on what it is best to do.” Rather than explaining to the church clerk that all could be well if he simply took the oath, he interpreted the “storm” from a providential perspective and concluded that “God has been pleased for the present to separate us. . . . It is not the fault of either of us that we are for a time forcibly parted.” With a prompt reunion unlikely, Hawks reckoned that his parishioners had only two legitimate options—they could retain him as rector or sever ties altogether. He considered the former option to be risky because General Wallace would consider it “a defiant course,” liable to cause trouble in the community for members who supported him and potentially giving Wallace a pretext to commandeer the church building for a hospital or barracks. Since this worst case scenario was unlikely and would have violated Lincoln’s clear directive that authorities not interfere with churches unless military necessity demanded it, Hawks seems to have been resigned to the latter as the more prudent choice. He consequently offered his resignation if it would save the church from further “embarrassment” but left the final decision with the vestry.

Always concerned about his reputation and fully cognizant that both Stanton and army chief of staff Henry W. Halleck already thought him unfit for command, Wallace feared the worst on June 21 when he heard that “a delegation of Union men” from a few Baltimore churches had traveled to Washington to persuade Lincoln to cashier him “on account of my action in the case of Dr. Hawks.” Having already been removed from field command, Wallace imagined either losing his current desk appointment or retaining his position but being humiliated and hung out to dry if Lincoln listened to Hawks’s friends. Taking no chances, Wallace enlisted his brother-in-law, Sen. Henry S. Lane of Indiana, to deliver a letter directly to Lincoln. He reminded the president of his earlier support in dealing with the rector and assured him that most loyal Baltimoreans took “hearty satisfaction” from his absence. The general pleaded, “If you decide to keep me here, I beg you to consider that it is a point of importance not to deprive me entirely of the influence which belongs to me as an officer whom the Government will support, and which can suffer from nothing so much as the triumphant return of Dr. Hawks, whom I still regard the most dangerous man of my knowledge for this locality.”

The delegation to Lincoln may have been nothing more than rumor, but if it indeed set out, it never accomplished its purpose in seeing Lincoln. The previous evening he and Tad had left Washington to visit Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at City Point, Virginia, and did not return until the evening of June 23. Since Lane also found the president absent, he left Wallace’s letter at the White House and added that Maryland congressman John A. J. Creswell would drop by later to discuss the situation. By the time Lincoln read Wallace’s letter, there were no accusers and no reason to revisit Hawks’s case, so he endorsed the envelope “Gen. Lew. Wallace” and moved on to more important business.

The vestry of Christ Church doggedly stuck with Hawks despite increased pecuniary difficulties caused by his prolonged absence. After Lincoln’s reelection, they again entreated the president to intervene and grant their rector’s return. He jotted “Dr. Hawks” on the back of their petition and again refrained from further action. Undeterred by this lack of response, in early December they secured Bishop Whittingham’s written opinion that Hawks’s restoration would benefit the congregation and save the church from “impending” financial disaster. They forwarded this supportive letter to former Postmaster General Montgomery Blair and requested him to take the matter directly to Lincoln, who could demonstrate his “justice and clemency” by permitting their law-abiding rector to rejoin his suffering congregation. Blair obliged and met with the president on the evening of December 22. After reading Whittingham’s letter, Lincoln deemed the church’s fiscal troubles insufficient grounds to justify countermanding Wallace’s orders. However, he told Blair that if the bishop communicated his belief that Hawks could return to Baltimore without disrupting “the public tranquility,” he would order it to be done. After conveying the president’s sentiments to Whittingham, Blair related that in September he had spoken to Wallace about Hawks, and the general had declared his intention to restore the rector after the fall of Richmond. For his part, Blair could not detect “the least clue to any danger to the public” from Hawks’s residence in Baltimore and concluded, “Indeed[,] the Genl’s great solicitude seemed to be for his own authority.”

Once more Lincoln permitted Whittingham to determine Hawks’s fate, and the bishop again declined to wield his influence. Still convinced that Lincoln lacked jurisdiction to act in church affairs and that he similarly possessed no authority to manipulate political matters, Whittingham unequivocally asserted, “I cannot advise the President to interfere with the action of General Wallace.” In fact, he even apologized to Blair that “a considerable and influential portion” of clergymen in his diocese “are avowedly hostile to the interests and plans of the Government.” Furthermore, he admitted that Baltimore’s disloyal Episcopalians considered Hawks “an able and efficient leader,” and he regarded their criticism of his own policies and official actions as bishop as an outlet for venting their displeasure with the U.S. government.

After it became known that Lincoln had given Whittingham the opportunity to have Hawks restored to his congregation, the principled bishop received some vicious hate mail. One disgruntled Episcopalian asserted, “You are at the head of a church without its confidence or affection and scar[c]ely have its respect.” After Lew Wallace was ordered to Texas in late January 1865 to investigate whether or not the government should aid Mexican rebels fighting the French, the vestry of Christ Church appealed Hawks’s case to Wallace’s replacement, Gen. William W. Morris. He located the paper trail indicating that Lincoln had allowed Hawks’s banishment but nevertheless referred the case to the War Department, which made no further inquiries. Having done all they could to bring back their rector and cognizant that a majority of pewholders would not renew their rents, on March 23 the vestry accepted Hawks’s resignation. The banished clergyman, described as “Metropolitan by habit,” seemed perfectly content in New York City during his exile from Baltimore. Despite declining health, he gathered a following but died in September 1866, shortly after laying the cornerstone for the Chapel of the Holy Saviour.

Abraham Lincoln wrote two two-sentence telegrams and added three endorsements to documents about Francis Hawks’s banishment from Baltimore. These eighty-six words and the back story around them reveal a president who carefully considered the context of the rector’s situation before rendering judgment. He recognized his limited knowledge of the case and prudently sought the opinions of interested stakeholders. Although he gave General Wallace latitude in dealing with Hawks, Lincoln brooked no usurpation of his presidential authority. Since Wallace’s conduct toward Hawks accorded with actions against ministers taken by other generals, and since Hawks had the option to swear an oath of allegiance to resume preaching and living in Baltimore, the president had no reason to upset Wallace by returning a clergyman with disloyal sentiments to a city inhabited with active traitors. Lincoln, it seems, understood that “the most dangerous man” in Baltimore was only a hawk without talons.

Sean A. Scott is associate teaching professor of history at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities. He teaches a course on Abraham Lincoln and writes about the intersection of religion and politics during the Civil War era.