Records show that Hawes participated in a charge on Charleston, West Virginia, on July 4, 1861 and helped defend a bridge on the Green River near Bowling Green on September 18, 1861. He was dispatched to Little Rock, Arkansas in October 1862 to serve as head of the cavalry brigade under Theophilus H. Holmes. Later, he served in the engagements at the Battle of Milliken's Bend and the Battle of Young's Point in June 1863 in Louisiana and then in Mobile, Alabama, aided the defense of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and finished his Confederate military service in Galveston, Texas.