It is said that Nathan was not a strong child at first, but grew vigorous with outdoor life; that "he was fond of running, leaping, wrestling, firing at a mark, throwing, lifting, playing ball," and used to tell the girls of Coventry he could do anything but spin. Stories told of him say that when he was older he could "put a hand on a fence as high as his head and clear it easily at a bound"; and that the marks of "a leap which he made upon the Green in New Haven were long preserved and pointed out."
One of his comrades in the army wrote of him, "His bodily agility was remarkable. I have seen him follow a football and kick it over the tops of the trees in the Bowery at New York (an exercise which he was fond of)."
But he was fond of study, as well as of play, and he must have done well at the Coventry School, for his parents determined to send him to college. He was fitted for Yale by the minister in Coventry, as there were then no preparatory schools such as we have now. When he was fourteen he entered Yale College at New Haven with his brother Enoch, who was a year and a half older than he. They were known in college as Hale Primus and Hale Secundus.
At Yale Nathan studied well and took a good stand. He became, too, one of the most popular men in his cla.s.s. He made many friends, and their letters to him show us how much they loved and admired him. At one time he was president, or "chancellor" as it was called, of the Linonia Debating Society; at another he was its secretary, or "scribe," and the minutes which he kept then can be seen now, in his own handwriting, in the Yale Library.
He was nearly six feet tall, broad-shouldered, wit blue eyes and brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a manner that was both attractive and dignified. A gentleman in New Haven who knew him well said of him, "That man is a diamond of the first water and calculated to excel in any station he a.s.sumes."
After he graduated in 1773, he taught school for a few months in East Haddam. The country schools were very simple in those days.
There were few books; a Psalter and a spelling-book were the most important ones used. There were no blackboards, and the teacher set "copies" on paper, and read out the "sums" in arithmetic, and often the whole school studied aloud. One of Nathan Hale"s pupils in East Haddam, who lived to be an old lady, said of him as a teacher, "Everybody loved him, he was so sprightly, intelligent, and kind and withal so handsome."
He was soon offered a better position in New London as the master of a new school in which he was expected to teach Latin as well as English. He wrote in one of his letters from New London:--
"I am happily situated here. I love my employment and find many friends among strangers. I have a school of thirty-two boys, half Latin, the rest English. In addition to this I have kept, during the summer, a morning school, between the hours of five and seven, of about twenty young ladies."
The schoolhouses in East Haddam and New London where Nathan Hale taught have been restored and are kept now as memorials of him.
While he was teaching in New London the war with England broke out. There was great excitement when the news came of the battle of Lexington (April 19, 1775), and a public meeting was held at which he is reported to have said, "Let us march immediately and never lay down our arms until we obtain our independence." He could not march immediately himself, for he was teaching school, but when summer came he entered the army as a lieutenant, and was soon made a captain. In September he went with some of the Connecticut troops to join Washington"s army which was besieging Boston. The American flag was not adopted until the next year, and as the colors appointed for his regiment, the Seventh Connecticut, were blue, they marched away from New London under a blue banner. His camp-basket, a powder-horn made by him, and his army diary are still in existence, and can be seen in the rooms of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford.
Here are some of the entries in his diary that fall and winter:--
"Friday 29th (Sept.)--Marched for Cambridge. Arrived 3 o"clock, and encamped on the foot of Winter Hill.
"Sat. 30th--Considerable firing upon Roxbury side in the forenoon.
"October 9th, Monday--Morning clear and pleasant but cold.
Exercised men 5 o"clock, one hour.
"Sabbath, 22d--Mounted picket guard. Had charge of the advance picket.
"Monday 6th (November)--It is of the utmost importance that an officer should be anxious to know his duty, but of greater that he should carefully perform what he does know.
"Tuesday, 7th--Left picket 10 o"clock.... Rain pretty hard most of the day. Studied the best method of forming a regiment for a review, manner of arranging the companies, also of marching round the reviewing officer.
"A man ought never to lose a moment"s time. If he put off a thing from one minute to the next his reluctance is but increased.
"Wednesday, 8th--Cleaned my gun, played some football and some checkers.
"22d, Friday--Some shot from the enemy.
"Feb. 14, 1776, Wednesday--Last night a party of Regulars made an attempt upon Dorchester.... The Guard house was set on fire but extinguished."
During this time many of the soldiers became discouraged with the hard work and poor food and pay, and we learn from his diary that Captain Hale offered to give the men in his company his own pay if they would stay on for a month longer. The diary and all his letters are full of courage and hopefulness.
In March, the British army, which had been shut up so long in Boston unable to get away by land, took ship and sailed for Halifax. Washington believed the next point of attack would be New York and he moved his army there to protect the city. So Hale"s regiment marched back to New London and embarked in transports for New York. The last six months of his short life were pa.s.sed in and near New York.
The spring was spent in fortifying the city, and in June Captain Hale wrote to his brother Enoch, "The army is every day improving in discipline and it is hoped will soon be strong enough to meet the enemy at any kind of play. My company, which was small at first, is increased to eighty, and a sergeant is recruiting, who I hope has got the other ten which completes the company."
When the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed, the soldiers received the news with great enthusiasm, and felt that they had at last an independent country of their own to fight for and, if need be, to die for.
The British army arrived and encamped on Staten Island. It was a finely equipped force of twenty-five thousand men with a fleet of ships to support it, and was in every respect better and stronger than the half-trained militia that made up most of the American army. The battle of Long Island, late in the summer, ended in a defeat for the Americans, and Washington"s skillful retreat at night across the East River from Long Island to New York was all that prevented a greater disaster. Many of the men in Captain Hale"s company had been recruited along the Connecticut sh.o.r.es, and there is no doubt that these sailors under his command were very useful that night in getting the troops safely back to New York.
After this the condition of things became very serious, for the British had got possession of Brooklyn Heights, which commanded the city over East River, and they might cross at any time and attack it. Washington ordered companies of rangers, or scouts, to be formed to keep a sharp watch on the enemy"s movements, and Captain Hale accepted an appointment in this body of picked men.
It was commanded by Colonel Knowlton, who was also a Connecticut man and had been a ranger himself in the old French-and-Indian War. He was a brave officer, and when he lay dying in the battle of Harlem Heights he said, "I do not value my life if we do but get the day." Captain Hale must have been glad to serve under such a leader.
Meanwhile, Washington had moved the greater part of his army outside New York to avoid being shut up in the city as the British had been in Boston, and was anxiously expecting an attack. But none came, and his suspense grew greater and greater as time pa.s.sed and he got no information as to what would happen.
"Everything depends on obtaining intelligence of the enemy"s motions," he wrote to his officers, "I was never more uneasy than on account of my want of knowledge," and he begged them to send some one into the enemy"s camp in disguise to find out what their plans were, and when and where they would attack.
It was not easy to get any one to go, for it meant being a spy.
Spies are necessary in all wars because the commanding general must have information about the enemy"s movements. But soldiers hate a spy, who comes into their camp as a friend when he is really an enemy, and honorable men do not like to do this. It is usually done by men who care most of all for the money it brings.
The service, too, is so dangerous that the general may not command it, he may only accept it when it is volunteered. If a spy is caught within the enemy"s lines no mercy is shown him; his trial is swift and his death certain; in those days the penalty was hanging.
This time a man of intelligence was needed and Colonel Knowlton explained the matter to some of his officers. One of them is said to have replied: "I am willing to be shot, but not to be hung."
But there was another who looked at it differently, and this was Captain Nathan Hale. It seemed to him that if his country called it was his duty to go, at the sacrifice, if necessary, of both his honor and his life. And the more he thought of it the more sure he was that it is the motive with which a deed is done that makes it good or evil, and that a service which his country demanded could not be dishonorable.
He asked advice from his friends, especially from Captain William Hull, of his old regiment, who had also been one of his fellow students at college. Captain Hull urged him strongly not to do it. He reminded him how men feel about a spy and told him, too, that it was doubtful if, with his frank, open character, he could ever succeed in deceiving people and pretending to be what he was not. He begged him for the sake of his family and his friends to give it up because it might end for him in a disgraceful death.
Captain Hale replied, "I am fully sensible of the consequences of discovery and capture in such a situation. But for a year I have been in the army and have not rendered any material service while receiving a compensation for which I make no return. Yet I am not influenced by the hope of promotion or reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. But," he added, taking his friend"s hand affectionately, "I will reflect, and do nothing but what duty demands."
He decided to go, and left the American camp the second week in September. He was to cross to Long Island and approach the British position from the rear, and he was to go as a schoolmaster looking for employment, which was the best disguise he could a.s.sume as he had once been a schoolmaster and might easily pa.s.s for one again. Just what his orders and instructions were we do not know, as the service was a secret one.
His faithful sergeant, Stephen Hempstead, of New London, went with him part of the way. On account of British ships cruising in the East Elver and in the Sound, they were obliged to go as far as Norwalk, Connecticut, before it was safe to cross. Hempstead tells us that at Norwalk Captain Hale changed his uniform for a plain suit of citizen"s brown clothes, with a round, broad- brimmed hat, took off his silver shoe-buckles, and left all his papers behind except his college diploma, which he thought might be useful. Then he said good-bye to Hempstead, telling him to wait for him there, and an armed sloop commanded by Captain Pond--probably Charles Pond, of Milford, a fellow officer in Hale"s regiment--carried him over to Huntington on Long Island.
Hempstead waited, but Captain Hale never returned. The next news his friends received was the news of his capture and execution as a spy in the British camp.
We shall probably never know just what happened after he left Huntington, what adventures he met with or what narrow escapes he had. About the time that he crossed the Sound, Sir William Howe, the British general, moved over to New York and took possession of the city, and Washington"s suspense ended. Perhaps Captain Hale did not learn of this until it was too late to return, or, perhaps, knowing it, he chose to go on and finish the work he had begun and take back information of the new position of the enemy.
We know that he pa.s.sed safely all through the British camps, both on Long Island and in New York, that he did his work thoroughly and well, made plans and drawings of the new fortifications in the city, and was only arrested on the last night, when the work was done and he was ready to return. Just where he was when he was captured we do not know. From the new line of intrenchments made by the British across the city he could have looked northward over to the American camp on Harlem Heights, scarcely a mile away, and could almost have seen the tents of his own company of rangers. Perhaps he made a quick dash for freedom across this short mile and was seized then. Or, perhaps, in the excitement of a great fire which raged all through the lower part of New York City on that day, he may have got safely back to Long Island and have been arrested as he tried to pa.s.s the sentries on the outposts. An old tradition says that he had gone as far as Huntington and was taken there. We cannot tell. But just as the difficult task was over, the sudden disappointment came.
The papers and drawings found on him told the story only too plainly, and he was carried before Sir William Howe. When he was questioned he at once gave his name, his rank in the American army, and his reasons for coming inside the British lines. No trial was necessary, and General Howe immediately signed the warrant for his execution on the next morning, Sunday, September 22, at eleven o"clock.
He was handed over to the provost marshal, William Cunningham, a coa.r.s.e and brutal man who has left a shocking record of cruelty to his prisoners. Hale asked if he might have a minister with him, but Cunningham refused. Then he asked for a Bible, but that, too, was forbidden. How he spent the night we cannot tell; part of it, no doubt, in prayer, for that was the habit of his life.
He could not want to die. He was young and strong, just twenty- one, hardly more than a boy, and life was all before him. He had friends who loved him; he was engaged to be married; he had every prospect of success and happiness. But he had deliberately counted the cost before he undertook the dangerous service, and the training of all his life, at home, at college, and in the army, had taught him not only to do and to dare, but, what is better still, to accept defeat bravely.
The next morning, while the last fatal preparations were being made, an aide-de-camp of General Howe"s, a brave officer of Engineers who was stationed near the place, asked that the prisoner be allowed to wait in his tent. "Captain Hale entered,"
he says; "he was calm and bore himself with gentle dignity in the consciousness of rect.i.tude and high intentions. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him; he wrote two letters, one to his mother, and one to a brother officer."
These letters Cunningham destroyed, saying that "the rebels should never know they had a man who could die with so much firmness."
There were few people present at his death. When he reached the foot of the tree where the sentence was to be executed, he was asked if he had anything to say, any confession to make. He told again who he was and why he came, and added quietly, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Then the noose was adjusted, and the cruel end came quickly.
These last words of Nathan Hale have been repeated again and again since that time. They have been cut in bronze and in marble, they have been taught in our schools. They are n.o.ble words, because they are simple and brave and unselfish. He could have had no idea that they would ever be heard beyond the little group of people about him when he died, but it so happened that General Howe had occasion to send a letter to Washington late that evening about an exchange of prisoners, and the bearer of the letter was Captain Montresor, the officer in whose tent Nathan Hale had spent the last hour of his life. Inside the American tines Montresor met Captain Hull, Hale"s intimate friend, the man who had warned Hale so earnestly of the fate that might be his. To him Montresor told the tragic story of that morning and repeated the words that have since become famous.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Courtesy of Mr. George D. Seymour
NATHAN HALE