Death of a Yaleman

"A spy for the Enemy (by his own full Confession) Apprehended Last night, was this day Executed at 11 oClock in front of the Artilery Park."

--Notation in a British orderly book, 1776

In South Coventry, Conn. last week, a crowd of 2,000 gathered in the meadows and lawns of an old homestead to honor Nathan Hale, the young patriot-spy of the American Revolution on the 200th anniversary of his birth. In a large circus tent near the old Hale house, greetings from President Eisenhower were read, and Connecticut's Governor Abraham Ribicoff praised Hale's bravery and sacrifice. Local churchwomen, dressed in the costumes of the Revolution, handed out coffee and cake, and the 20-piece Fife and Drum Corps from Stony Creek, in sleeveless red jackets, black leggings, tricorn hats and fawn-colored breeches, played 18th-century music. One of the stories--doubtless apocryphal--circulating about the Hale homestead concerned a Harvardman who visited the place recently, and, after examining everything closely, approached a hostess with a question. "Who," he asked, "was Nathan Hale?"

Latin at 5 a.m. When he was 14, in 1769, Nathan Hale and his older brother Enoch,* left the Coventry homestead and, riding horseback through the September countryside, reached Yale College, 60 miles away, in two days. At Yale young Nathan was a bright student and something of an athlete. The mark of his record broad jump was preserved on the college green for years (later, when he was in the Army, Hale astonished soldiers in his company by kicking a ball over the treetops of the Bowery).

Nathan graduated from Yale at 18 and became a teacher. For a while he was the schoolmaster at Haddam Landing on the Connecticut River; later he moved to New London, where in the summer mornings he taught a class of girls from 5 to 7 a.m. He was happy in his work, but a few weeks after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, he decided to join the Army and was commissioned a lieutenant. "I have thought much of never quitting it [teaching] but with life," he wrote the New London school trustees, requesting release from his contract, "but at present there seems an opportunity of more extensive public service."

Like many a fresh young officer before and since, Hale longed for battle but saw very little action. His regiment was moved from Massachusetts to Manhattan just before the British took Long Island. General Washington, anxious for information about the plans and strength of the enemy, asked General William Heath to establish a "channel of information" behind the British lines. Hale, by now a captain, volunteered for the job. "I am fully sensible of the consequences of discovery and capture in such a situation," he told Captain William Hull, a classmate at Yale and a fellow officer. "I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by becoming necessary."

Hale and a friend, Sergeant Stephen Hempstead, went to Norwalk, Conn. "Capt. Hale had changed his uniform for a plain suit of citizen's brown clothes," the sergeant recalled later, "with a round broad-brimmed hat; assuming the character of a Dutch schoolmaster." Before they parted company, Hale left all his valuables and papers, except for his Yale diploma (which he needed to establish his disguise) with the sergeant. Then a friendly sea captain ferried him across Long Island Sound to Huntington, and left him.

Immortality at 11 a.m. From that point until his death, the story of Nathan Hale is misted over with legend. It is certain that he wandered through the enemy lines for at least a week and reached Manhattan Island (the lower part of which the British had captured since Hale left Norwalk), that he collected detailed maps of fortifications, with Latin notations in the margins, and hid them under the inner soles of his shoes. Just how he was captured is unknown, but one story put it that he was recognized by a Tory relative as he sat in Rachael Chichester's tavern ("Mother Chick's"), and betrayed.

After his capture Hale was brought to the headquarters of General William Howe in Manhattan's Beekman Mansion (at what is now the corner of First Avenue and 51st Street), where he volunteered his name, rank and mission. He was condemned to death, and held overnight in the greenhouse of the mansion. The next morning, Sept. 22, 1776, at 11 a.m., he was hanged at a point which is now 66th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan. His calm dignity and poise made a deep impression on Captain John Montresor, an aide-de-camp to General Howe. It was Montresor who later reported Hale's last words: "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country."* After the patriot's body was cut down, it was buried in an unmarked grave and forgotten.

* The grandfather of Author Edward Everett (The Man Without a Country) Hale.

* Hale's words were inspired by a line from one of his favorite plays, Joseph Addison's Cato. The line: "What pity is it that we can die but once to serve our country!" Another line from the same play--"Chains, or conquest; liberty, or death"--is believed to be the source of Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

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