From these extracts the reader will readily perceive the position of Mr. Bell upon the great political question of the day.
JOHN P. HALE.
John P. Hale comes of good old New England stock. His ancestors were the men who founded those New England institutions which are alike the glory of that section of the country and the whole nation. The grandfather of Mr. Hale—Samuel Hale—was a lawyer of ability and success, and he educated his son John—father of the present Mr. Hale—to the same profession. The father of Mr. Hale married a Miss O'Brien, daughter of Capt. Jeremiah O'Brien. Of this ancestor Mr. Hale is justly proud. The following true story is told of his gallantry at the beginning of the Revolutionary War:
"When the news of the struggle with the mother country reached Machias, in Maine (then a province of Massachusetts), on the 9th of May, 1775, an armed British schooner, the Margaretta, was lying in port, with two sloops under her convoy, loading with lumber in behalf of the king's government. An attempt was made to capture the officers of the Margaretta while they were at church, but they escaped on board, weighed anchor, and dropped down the river. On the 11th, a party of thirty-five volunteers was hastily collected, and, taking one of the lumber sloops, they made sail. The Margaretta, on observing their appearance, weighed and crowded sail, to avoid a conflict; the sloop proved to be a better sailor. As she approached, the schooner opened a fire with four light guns and fourteen swivels, to which the sloop replied with musketry, and soon the Americans boarded and captured the Margaretta. The loss of life in this affair was not very large, though twenty men on both sides are said to have been killed and wounded. It was the first blow struck on the water in the Revolutionary struggle, and it was characterized by a long chase, a bloody struggle, and a triumph.
"There was originally no commander in the sloop, but previously to engaging the Margaretta, Jeremiah O'Brien was selected for that station. Transferring the armament to a sloop, he engaged separately, and captured two English cruisers sent out from Halifax expressly to take him, and carried their crews as prisoners to Watertown, where the provincial Legislature of Massachusetts was assembled. His gallantry was so generally admired, that he was appointed a captain in the marine of the colony, and afterward distinguished himself as a continental officer. Two of his brothers, uncles of Mrs. John P. Hale, senior, were also noted for their nautical bravery."
Mr. Hale, the subject of this sketch, was born on the 31st of March, 1806, at Rochester, New Hampshire. When a boy he, like most New England boys, attended the common district school of his neighborhood. When he grew up to be a young man, he was sent to Phillips Academy, at Exeter, where the well-known Dr. Abbott also educated Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Lewis Cass and other distinguished men. In September, 1823, Mr. Hale entered Bowdoin College, and graduated with high honors in 1827. Among his associates in college were Hawthorne, Longfellow, Franklin Pierce, Prof. Stone, and S. S. Prentiss. In 1828, Mr. Hale selected his home, the town of Dover, where he now resides. There he went to study law in the office of D. M. Christie. He was admitted to the bar in 1830, and in 1834 his clients had become so numerous that he was obliged to take a partner. He was never so distinguished as a law-student, as for his popular argument with a jury. His forte was then, as now, in appealing directly to the hearts of men. By common sense, humor, pathos and sarcasm he won his cause. Mr. Hale was, we presume, a little more inclined to politics than to law, and if we may judge at all from his looks to-day, he was never over-fond of severe application, mental or physical, to labor.
In 1832, Mr. Hale was elected to represent Dover in the New Hampshire Legislature, and was a staunch Democrat. In 1834, General Jackson appointed him U.S. Attorney for the district of New Hampshire, an office which he filled creditably to himself. Mr. Van Buren continued him in this office, and he filled it till John Tyler removed him. This was a turning point in his history. He fell back to his old practice of the law; but in 1843, he was nominated and elected to Congress, to take his seat in the House of Representatives. A struggle was at that time beginning between the North and the South, and Mr. Hale, apparently to his certain defeat and humiliation, for New Hampshire was then overwhelmingly Democratic, took side with the North and freedom. He was renominated for Congress, but soon afterward he had the courage to come out in a letter denouncing the annexation of Texas. This, as a matter of course, brought down upon him the enmity of his old companions. The State Democratic Committee called a new convention in his district, set his nomination aside, and nominated John Woodbury in his place. It was at this juncture that Mr. Hale showed his nerve, and it is said that his spirited wife sustained him through the campaign with a courage and spirit second only to his own. Suffice it to say, that after an arduous campaign, Mr. Hale triumphed so far as to prevent his competitor from being elected. A majority was required to elect, and no candidate could get that majority. The next year Mr. Hale was sent again to the State Legislature to represent the town of Dover, and he was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives. He presided so fairly and won so much upon the members, that before the adjournment took place, the Legislature elected Mr. Hale to represent the State, in part, for six years in the United States Senate! This was a great triumph. The man who had been set aside for his faithfulness to his own convictions of right, by party managers, was taken up by the State at large, and sent to represent New Hampshire in the Senate of the United States. His new position was an extraordinary one. He was about to take his seat in the Senate backed by no party, utterly alone, sent there for his individual merits, and not to advance the interests of any party.
A writer not agreeing or sympathizing with Mr. Hale in his peculiar anti-slavery views, speaks of this period of Mr. Hale's history in the following language:
"When Mr. Hale took his seat he was almost alone, and had to combat, single-handed, the political 'giants in those days.' Sometimes he was met with labored arguments, then subjected to bitter reproaches; at times those who were but 'his peers' would affect almost to ignore his presence, and again they would mercilessly denounce him as advocating doctrines dangerous to the liberties of the Republic. But the senator from New Hampshire was not to be intimidated or diverted from what he considered to be his duty. Adopting the guerrilla tactics, he manfully held his ground, and with felicitous humor, pungent retort, or keen sarcasm, made an impression upon the phalanx against which he had to contend. So high were his aims, and so conciliating were his manners, that before the close of his senatorial term, Mr. Hale had beaten down the barriers of prejudice, and fairly conquered sectional discourtesy. He was thus not only the standard-bearer, but the pioneer of the North in the Senate."