Hale taught school at Hale's Mill, Virginia in 1876. He moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1878 and engaged in the nursery business as well as the wholesale dry goods business, banking, and farming. He married Laura Adelaide Sebastian in 1890, and they had five children. He served as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1891 to 1893. He was a member of the Tennessee Senate from 1893 to 1895. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination in 1902 as a Representative to the Fifty-eighth Congress.