Civil War Oddities #60

Edward Everett Hale, grandnephew of the Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale, was born in 1822. A graduate of Harvard, he became a Unitarian clergyman who for six years before his death was chaplain of the U.S. Senate. He’d be largely forgotten today, however, had he not written for The Atlantic Monthly a short story that appeared in 1863.

Hale’s fictional account of adventures of “The Man Without a Country” was a thin veiled report of the travails of Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham. Vocally opposed to the war, the editor-lawmaker made international news when he was banished from the United States because of his views.

Today, Hale’s writing is better known than is Vallandigham’s name.