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John P. Hale

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John Parker Hale (March 31, 1806 – November 19, 1873) was an American politician and lawyer from New Hampshire. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1843 to 1845 and in the United States Senate from 1847 to 1853 and again from 1855 to 1865. He was a leading member of the Free Soil Party and was its presidential nominee in 1852.

Biography

Hale was born in Rochester, Strafford County, New Hampshire, the son of John Parker Hale and Lydia Clarkson O'Brien. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1827. After passing the bar examination, Hale lived and practiced law in Dover, New Hampshire; his house is now part of the Woodman Institute, a local museum. He married Lucy Lambert, the daughter of William Thomas Lambert and Abigail Ricker. In 1834, President Andrew Jackson appointed him to serve as a U.S. Attorney.

He was elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth Congress, serving from March 4, 1843 to March 3, 1845. He was later elected as a Free Soil candidate to the United States Senate in 1846 and served from March 4, 1847, to March 3, 1853. He was among the strongest opponents of the Mexican-American War in the Senate and is considered "the first U.S. Senator with an openly anti-slavery (or abolitionist) platform".

Hale was an unsuccessful candidate for President of the United States on the Free Soil ticket in 1852, losing to Democrat Franklin Pierce, a staunch political enemy of Hale's. (See U.S. presidential election, 1852.)

He was again elected to the Senate in 1855 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Charles G. Atherton. He was re-elected in 1859, in total serving from July 30, 1855, to March 3, 1865. He became a Republican and served as the chair of the Senate Republican Conference until 1862.

President Lincoln nominated Hale to the post of minister to Spain and he served in that capacity 1865–1869.

Interestingly, Hale's daughter Lucy Lambert Hale was betrothed to John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Booth had a picture of Lucy Hale with him when he was killed in 1865. Today, portraits of President Lincoln and John Hale hang next to each other in the chambers of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

John Parker Hale is buried in Dover at the Pine Hill Cemetery.

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