Charles Hale

Charles Hale
Portrait of Charles Hale, ca.1861
Member of the Massachusetts State Senate
Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
In office 1859–1859
Preceded by	Julius Rockwell
Succeeded by	John A. Goodwin
Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives

Charles Hale (1831–1882) of Boston was a legislator in the Massachusetts state House and Senate intermittently between 1855 and 1877. He was Speaker of the House in 1859. In the 1860s he lived in Cairo, Egypt, as the American consul-general. From 1872 to 1873 he worked as United States Assistant Secretary of State under Hamilton Fish.

Hale was born to Nathan Hale and Sarah Preston Everett. Siblings included Sarah Everett Hale, Nathan Hale Jr., Lucretia Peabody Hale, Edward Everett Hale, Alexander Hale, and Susan Hale.

Charles graduated from Harvard College in 1850; whilst a student he rowed in the Undine Club. He served as class secretary, 1850-1882.

In his early career, Hale worked as a journalist. He founded the short-lived journal To-Day: a Boston Literary Journal in 1852, of which only two volumes were published. He also contributed to his father's paper, the Boston Daily Advertiser, in the 1850s and 1860s. There he started as a reporter after graduation, and was later a junior editor. He also contributed to the North American Review and to the Nautical Almanac.

In 1855, Hale was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and was chosen Speaker in 1859, up to that time the youngest man ever chosen for the position. He served as U.S. consul-general in Cairo, Egypt, 1864-1870. In Cairo he "arrested the conspirator, John Surratt," suspected of plotting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.