Hale's last election victory, in 1956, saw him winning by only 29 votes out of over 100,000 cast. His Democratic Party opponent was James C. Oliver, who, as a Republican, Hale had unseated for the same congressional seat in 1942. Oliver ran against Hale again in 1958 and this time won back the seat he'd occupied 26 years before. Hale afterwards resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C.. He died on November 30, 1976 in Washington, D.C., and was interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, Maine.