Compiled by Russell Bastedo
NH State Curator
1998/1999

John Parker Hale (1806 - 1873)
Born at Rochester (NH); died at Dover (NH).
Lawyer, state and national legislator.
Portrait by U. D. Tenney, 1874.
Presented to the State of New Hampshire, 1874.

John Hale graduated from Bowdoin (ME) College, in the Class of 1827. He was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar (1830), and practiced law at Dover.

Hale was elected a State Representative from Dover (served 1832/4). He then served as United States District Attorney (1834/41). He was elected to the United States Congress (served (1843/5), and was United States Senator for New Hampshire (1847/53, 1855/65). His last official position was as United States Minister to Spain (1865/9).

John Parker Hale was a major political figure in New Hampshire and American political history. A leading voice for the abolition of slavery, he refused to vote as a matter of abolitionist principle for the annexation of Texas as a slaveholding state (1845). His Democratic Party retaliated by expelling Hale from the party. Hale was then elected as an Independent to the United States Senate (1847/53). In 1852 he was nominated by the Free-Soil Party for the presidency, and he received 155,000 votes in the national election. The Free-Soil Party was one of several third party alternatives to the Whig and Democratic parties then controlling national politics; in 1856 the Free-Soil Party was one of the major components of the new Republican Party, which emerged as a national party in 1856. The Republicans' presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, was not elected in 1856; but in 1860 the Republicans became a national party with their candidate, Abraham Lincoln, elected President.

Elected for a second and third term to the United States Senate (served 1855/64), Hale was accused of questionable practices as Chairman of the Naval Committee. Hale had secured an abolition to flogging in the American Navy, and he urged an end to the grog ration as well. He was denied renomination by his New Hampshire Republican party in 1864 because of the charges. President Lincoln, then appointed Hale U.S. Minister to Spain.

It is an indication of Hale's stature in New Hampshire that his statue stands outside the New Hampshire State House. Hale's son-in-law, U.S. Senator William E. Chandler, informed Governor and Council (1890) that he wished to donate a statue of Hale to the State, and that this statue would be cast at the same foundry and on the same scale as the statue of Daniel Webster. Governor and Council voted (November 6, 1890) to accept Senator Chandler's gift and to provide a specific location close to Daniel Webster's brooding likeness. The Hale statue was cast at the Von Miller Foundry, Munich, Germany. It was unveiled in public ceremony, August 3, 1892.

References: W. Bridgwater and E.J. Sherwood, eds., The Columbia Encyclopedia (1950); L. Guiler, ed., Who Was Who in America, 1607 - 1896 (1963); A. H. Guernsey and H.M. Alden, eds., Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (The Fairfax press: facsimile reprint, 1866 edition).