Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/54

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HALE
HALE

oratory, which, being exerted against American chattel-slavery, seldom failed to arouse sympathetic sentiments in his audiences. Mr. Hale opposed flogging and the spirit-ration in the navy, and secured the abolition of the former by law of 28 Sept., 1850, and of the latter by law of 14 July, 1862. He served as counsel in 1851 in the important trials that arose out of the forcible rescue of the fugitive slave Shadrach from the custody of the U. S. marshal in Boston. In 1852 he was nominated at Pittsburg, Pa., by the Free-soil party for president, with George W. Julian as vice-president, and they received 157,685 votes. His first senatorial term ended, and he was succeeded by Charles G. Atherton, a Democrat, on 4 March, 1853, on which day Franklin Pierce was inaugurated president. The following winter Mr. Hale began practising law in New York city. But the repeal of the Missouri compromise measures again overthrew the Democrats of New Hampshire; they failed duly to elect U. S. senators in the legislature of June, 1854, and in March, 1855, they completely lost the state. On 13 June, 1855, James Bell, a Whig, was elected U. S. senator for six years from 3 March, 1855, and Mr. Hale was chosen for the four years of the unexpired term of Mr. Atherton, deceased. On 9 June, 1858, he was re-elected for a full term of six years, which ended on 4 March, 1865. On 10 March, 1865, he was commissioned minister to Spain, and went immediately to Madrid. Mr. Hale was recalled in due course, 5 April, 1869, took leave, 29 July, 1869, and returned home in the summer of 1870. Mr. Hale, without sufficient cause, attributed his recall to a quarrel between himself and Horatio J. Perry, his secretary of legation, in the course of which a charge had been made that Mr. Hale's privilege, as minister, of importing free of duty merchandize for his official or personal use, had been exceeded and some goods put upon the market and sold. Mr. Hale's answer was, that he had been misled by a commission-merchant, instigated by Mr. Perry. The latter was removed 28 June, 1869. Mr. Hale had been one of the victims of the “National hotel disease,” and his physical and mental faculties were much impaired for several years before his death. Immediately upon his arrival home he was prostrated by paralysis, and shortly afterward received a fracture of one of the small bones of the leg when thrown down by a runaway horse. In the summer of 1873 his condition was further aggravated by a fall that dislocated his hip.


HALE, Robert Safford, lawyer, b. in Chelsea, Vt., 24 Sept., 1822 ; d. in Elizabethtown, N. Y., 14 Dec, 1881. He was graduated at the Univer- sity of Vermont in 1842, studied law, and was ad- mitted to the bar at Elizabethtown, Essex co., N. Y., in 1847. He was surrogate and county judge from 1856 till 1864, regent of the University of New York from 1859 until his death, and presidential elector in 1860. He served as special counsel for the United States from 1868 till 1870, being charged with the defence of the " abandoned and captured property claims," and was agent and counsel for the United States before the American and British mixed commission, under the treaty of Washington, from 1871 till 1873. He was a member of congress from 1865 till 1867, and again from 1873 till 1875. HALE, Sal in ii, historian, b. in Alstead, Cheshire co., N. H., 7 March, 1787 ; d. in Somerville, Mass., 19 Nov., 1866. His father, David Hale, joined the American army after the battle of Lexington, and served throughout the Revolutionary war. Salma, the third of fourteen children, was apprenticed to a printer in Walpole, N. H. At seventeen he wrote an English grammar (Worcester, Mass., 1804), which was afterward rewritten under the title M A New Grammar of the English Language " (New York, 1831). At the age of eighteen he became editor of " The Political Observatory," at Walpole, N. H. He then studied law, became clerk of the court of common pleas for Cheshire county, and removed to Keene, N. H., in 1813. In 1817-34 he was clerk of the supreme judicial court, and in the latter year was admitted to the bar. In 1816 he was elected to congress as a Republican, but declined a re-election. He subsequently devoted himself to the preparation of a '• History of the United States," which gained a prize of $400 and a gold medal that had been offered by the Ameri- can academy of belles-lettres of New York "for the best-written history of the United States, which shall contain a suitable exposition of the situation, character, and interests, absolute and relative, of the American republic, calculated for a class-book in academies and schools." This was first pub- lished under the title of "The History of the United States of America, from their First Settle- ment as Colonies to the Close of the War with Great Britain in 1815 " (1821). It was afterward continued to 1845, and went through many edi- tions. Mr. Hale was a trustee of Dartmouth in 1816, and of the University of Vermont in 1823, and received honorary degrees from each. He was secretary to the commissioners for determining the northeastern boundary-line of the United States, was president of the New Hampshire historical society in 1830, a member of the New Hamp- shire house of representatives in 1828 and 1844, and of the senate in 1824 and 1845. He was a contributor to newspapers and periodicals, was in- strumental in organizing the first agricultural so- ciety in New Hampshire, and in promoting tem- perance, education, the abolition of slavery, and the Unitarian movement. While in congress he opposed the Missouri compromise. His works in- clude " The Administration of John Q. Adams and the Opposition by Algernon Sidney" (Con- cord, N. H., 1826) ; " Conspiracy of the Spaniards against Venice, translated from Abbe Real, and of John Lewis Fiesco against Genoa, translated from Cardinal De Retz " (Boston, 1828) ; " Annals of the Town of Keene, from its First Settlement in 1734 to 1790 " (Concord, N. H., 1826, and a continua- tion to 1815, Keene, 1851); "An Oration on the Character of Washington " (Keene, N. H., 1832) ; "Address on the Connection of Chemistry and Agriculture," delivered before the Cheshire county agricultural society (Keene, 1848); and an "Ad- dress before the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1828" (Concord, 1832; Manchester, 1870).— Hi's son, George Silsbee, lawyer, b. in Keene, N. H., 24 Sept., 1825, was graduated at Harvard in 1844, studied at the law-school there, and taught in Richmond, Va. He was admitted to the bar in Boston in 1850, where he has since been engaged in the practice of his profession. He has been a trustee of various institutions and in the city government of Boston, is a member of the Massachusetts and New Hampshire historical and of the New England historic-genealogical societies, president of the American Unitarian association, and has taken active interest in philanthropic and charitable movements. He edited, in connection with George P. Sanger, and later with John Codman, the 16th, 17th, and 18th volumes of the " Boston Law Reporter," was the sole editor of the 16th, 17th, and 18th volumes of the " United States Digest," and of the 19th with II. Farnam Smith. He has written " Memoirs of Joel Parker," some time chief justice of