Several years before he was elected to the state senate of New Hampshire in 1824, Salma Hale, the son of a Revolutionary war hero, published his History of the United States. It was a big success, winning the highly coveted prize awarded by the New York Academy of Language and Belles Lettres for the best history textbook for schools. This is no surprise, since Hale had been writing for years, publishing his first book – a grammar of English – as a teenager. Before the publication of his History, Hale also had been elected to Congress as a Republican in 1816; later in life he served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. What is significant about his ongoing dual careers in politics and letters is that they mark his prize-winning History as the product of an avocation; it is a text, in other words, whose well-advertised utility to American citizens closely paralleled Hale's activities in politics and government. Like virtually all history-writers during the early republic, Hale understood the duality of his life as something perfectly reconcilable. His literary efforts, like his public service in government, fulfilled an ethos of citizenship. Readers of his writings, young and old alike, would be socialized as good “republicans.”