Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/131

 EUGENE HALE

, of Ellsworth, was born at Turner, Oxford County, Me., June 9, 1836; received an academic education; studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1857, and commenced practice at the age of twenty; was for nine successive years county attorney for Hancock County; was a member of the legislature of Maine in 1867, 1868, and 1880; was elected to the Forty-First, Forty-Second, and Forty-Third Congresses; was appointed Postmaster-General by President Grant in 1874, but declined; was reëlected to the Forty-Fourth and Forty-Fifth Congresses; was tendered a Cabinet appointment, as Secretary of the Navy, by President Hayes, and declined; was chairman of the Republican congressional committee for the Forty-Fifth Congress; received the degree of LL. D. from Bates College, from Colby University, and from Bowdoin College; was a delegate to the Cincinnati convention in l876 and the Chicago conventions in 1868 and 1880; was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican, to succeed Hannibal Hamlin, Republican (who declined a reëlection), and took his seat March 4, 1881; was reëlected in 1887 and in 1893. His term of service will expire March 3, 1899.