James H. Hawley

American politician

James Henry Hawley (January 17, 1847 – August 3, 1929) was an American attorney and politician from Idaho. He was state's ninth governor from 1911 to 1913, and the mayor of Boise from 1903 to 1905. He also acted as prosecutor or defense attorney for a substantial number of criminal cases. Outside of criminal law, he specialized in irrigation and mining cases.

Born in Dubuque, Iowa, Hawley's mother died when he was an infant. Two years later, his father followed the gold rush to California, then moved to Texas in 1856. Thus, James grew up with the family of his uncle, James Carr. James's maternal Carr ancestors included a great grandfather who was a major during the Revolutionary War, and a grandfather who was a captain in the War of 1812. His father served as a major in a Texas regiment of the Confederate Army. At the start of the Civil War, James tried to join the Union Army as part of an Iowa Volunteer regiment. Rejected as far too young at age fourteen, he gave up the idea when his uncle relocated to California in the early summer of 1861. While they waited in Walla Walla, word spread of major new gold discoveries in the Boise Basin, a mountainous area around Idaho City, northeast of present day Boise. Drawn by the new finds, they moved to the Basin in the spring of 1863. Hawley returned to San Francisco to attend City College there in 1865. He also began to read law at an attorney's office. He apparently completed the coursework he wanted by the spring of 1867. However, he then ran into some difficulty in San Francisco, the details of which "have not been preserved." According to one account, he ran away to sea and ended up in China, on the losing side of the Taiping Rebellion. Supposedly, he escaped death after being captured by government forces through the good offices of the British consul. In any case, Hawley returned to the Boise Basin in 1868, and again took up mining and prospecting.

Still determined to become a lawyer, Hawley continued to read law at a Boise County attorney's office. At the same time, he worked in gold fields all over central Idaho. In 1870, voters in Boise County elected him, as a Democrat, to the territorial house of representatives. He reportedly received "the largest majority given any one on the ticket." One cowboy, Jackson Lee "Diamondfield Jack" Davis, had a notorious reputation as a gunman, and had earlier shot and wounded another sheepman. Despite a deeply flawed case, with much mishandling of evidence by authorities, Davis was convicted and sentenced to hang. With virtually the same physical evidence, such as it was, the other cowboy was declared not guilty. Before the hanging, two other cattlemen confessed to the "self defense" shooting of the sheepmen. Because of structural flaws in Idaho's legal system at the time, Hawley never could secure a "not guilty" verdict for his client. With Orchard as their star witness, the State tried to make an example of three unions leaders who had supposedly orchestrated the murder. Hawley again teamed up with Borah to prosecute the State's conspiracy cases. Their first case, in 1907, proceeded against "Big Bill" Haywood, General Secretary of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Haywood's defense team, which included the renowned Clarence Darrow, found enough holes in the State's evidence to secure a "not guilty" verdict. After the second leader received a "not guilty" verdict, charges against the third were dropped. Although the State failed, at great expense, to gain a conviction, Hawley always felt the trials had been "worth the effort that had been made." In elections soon after Haywood's acquittal, the more radical leaders of the WFM were turned out of office. After that, according to Hawley, the unions "have, as a general thing, been under the management of law abiding men." The assassin, Harry Orchard, pleaded guilty in March 1908 and was sentenced to hang, but it was commuted to life imprisonment; Orchard died at the state penitentiary in 1954 at age 88.

The WFM acquittals did not hurt Hawley's reputation. He still carried on a lucrative law practice and, as noted above, was elected governor. (Nor did Borah suffer.) Hawley retired from politics at age 70, after his second failed bid at a U. S. Senate seat. In 1915, Hawley was appointed to the board of directors for the Idaho State Historical Society. In a subsequent vote by the board, he was elected President of the Society. Five years later, the four volume History of Idaho was published, with Hawley as its Editor. Hawley remained a strong advocate for the Historical Society throughout his tenure. In his letter of transmittal for the required 1923–1924 biennial report, Hawley pleaded that the Librarian and her Assistant "should be given a salary commensurate with the importance of their positions and the character of their duties." He was still president, and still asking for better funding, when he died of a heart attack at age 82 in Boise on August 3, 1929.