Eugene Hale

Who was Eugene Hale?

Eugene Hale was a Republican United States Senator from Maine.

Born at Turner, Maine, he was educated in local schools and at Maine's Hebron Academy. He was admitted to the bar in 1857 and served for nine years as prosecuting attorney for Hancock County, Maine. He was elected to the Maine Legislature 1867–68, to the U.S. House of Representatives 1869–79, serving in the 41st and four succeeding Congresses. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1878 to the 46th Congress.

He was elected to succeed Hannibal Hamlin in the U.S. Senate in 1881; reelected in 1887, 1893, 1899 and 1905 and served from March 4, 1881, to March 3, 1911. During his time in the Senate, he served several committees, chairing, during various Congreses, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Census, the U.S. Senate Committee on Private Land Claims, the U.S. Senate Committee on Printing, the U.S. Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations and the U.S. Senate Committee on Public Expenditures. He was Republican Conference Chairman from 1908 to 1911.

Although he declined the post of United States Secretary of the Navy in the Rutherford B. Hayes administration, Senator Hale performed constructive work of the greatest importance in the area of naval appropriations, especially during the early fights for the "new Navy." "I hope", he said in 1884, "that I shall not live many years before I shall see the American Navy what it ought to be, the pet of the American people." Much later in his career, he opposed the building of large numbers of capital ships, which he regarded as less effective in proportion to cost and subject to rapid obsolescence.