Hale, Edward Everett (1822-1909), was a Unitarian clergyman, editor, and humanitarian. He wrote many books, but only the short story “The Man Without a Country” (1863) has remained well known. It is the story of a young Army officer, Philip Nolan, who exclaimed during his trial by court-martial that he wished he would never hear of the United States again. Nolan was put on a ship with instructions that no one was ever again to give him any news of his own land. But before he died, he redeemed himself and begged for reconciliation with his country. Hale’s story caused such a sensation that many people failed to realize that it was fiction. It has been said that Hale’s formula in his stories was to take an impossible situation and make it appear probable by simplicity and directness.
Hale was born on April 3, 1822, in Boston, son of Nathan Hale, first editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser, and grandnephew of Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary War hero (see Hale, Nathan). As a youngster, he wrote stories and printed them. He also published a small newspaper which he circulated among his relatives and neighbors.
Hale graduated from Harvard College when he was 17. He became pastor of the Church of the Unity, in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1846. He moved 10 years later to the South Congregational Church in Boston and stayed there for 43 years.
His works include A New England Boyhood (1893) and the story “My Double, and How He Undid Me” (1859). He himself thought his best book was the novel In His Name (1873). Hale edited a monthly magazine, Old and New, for five years, and worked for the New England Emigrant Aid Society. He was a leader in the Lend-a-Hand charity movement, whose motto was “Look up and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, lend a hand.” Hale died on June 10, 1909.
