RARE! "Maine Senator" Eugene Hale Hand Written Letter Todd Mueller COA

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Up for auction a
RARE! "Maine Senator" Eugene Hale Hand Written Letter.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-4695
Eugene Hale
(June 9, 1836 – October 27, 1918) was a
Republican
United States Senator
from
Maine
. Born in
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 (and had previously declined a
Cabinet
appointment under
Ulysses S. Grant
), 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. He was served as a member of the
National Monetary Commission
. Hale received an LL.D. from
Bates College
in 1882. During the late 1890s, Hale and Senator
George F. Hoar
of Massachusetts were the most vocal opponents of American intervention into the ongoing insurrection in Cuba. Hale disdained expansionism and
jingoism
and often challenged claims made by senators on Cuban military victories and Spanish atrocities. He so frequently engaged in verbal jousts with Cuban sympathizers in the Senate that they unfairly accused him of parroting Spanish propaganda and called him "The Senator from Spain." Senator Hale retired from politics in 1911 and spent the remainder of his life in
Ellsworth, Maine
, and in
Washington, D.C.
, where he died. He is buried in Woodbine Cemetery,
Ellsworth, Maine
. Two ships were named
USS
Hale
for him. He was the father of
Frederick Hale
, also a U.S. Senator from Maine, and of diplomat
Chandler Hale
.
Gertrude Atherton
's novel
Senator North
(1900) was based on Eugene Hale.