Frederick Hale (US senator)

41
Frederick Hale (US senator) bigraphy, stories - American politician

Frederick Hale (US senator) : biography

October 7, 1874 – September 28, 1963

Frederick Hale (October 7, 1874September 28, 1963) was a politician from the U.S. state of Maine, representing the state in the United States Senate from 1917 to 1941. He was the son of Eugene Hale, the grandson of Zachariah Chandler, both also U.S. Senators, brother of diplomat Chandler Hale, and the cousin of U.S. Representative Robert Hale.

Hale was born in Detroit, Michigan and attended preparatory schools in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and Groton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1896 and attended Columbia Law School, New York City, in 1896 and 1897. He was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in Portland, Maine, in 1899.

Hale was a Republican member of the Maine House of Representatives, 1905–1906; and a member of the Republican National Committee, 1912-1918. In 1916, he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate, defeating incumbent Democrat Charles Fletcher Johnson to reclaim the Senate seat that had been held by his father Eugene Hale.

He was reelected in 1922, 1928, and again in 1934, serving from March 4, 1917 to January 3, 1941. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1940. He served as chairman, Committee on Canadian Relations in the Sixty-sixth Congress, and served on the Committee on Naval Affairs in the Sixty-eighth through Seventy-second Congresses, and the Committee on Appropriations in the Seventy-second Congress.

A fierce opponent of the Ku Klux Klan faction of the Republican Party in his native state of Maine, Hale was one of a handful of senators who voted against the elevation of Hugo Black to the Supreme Court in 1937 based on his alleged Klan membership."Dons Robe of Supreme Court Justice in October", Nashua Telegraph, Aug. 18, 1937, p. 6

He retired to private life and died in Portland, Maine. He is interred in Woodbine Cemetery, Ellsworth, Maine.