consulted his council, and at their direction summoned Knowlton to ask for some volunteer of intelligence, who would find his way into the English lines, and bring back some tidings that could be relied upon. Knowlton summoned a number of officers, and stated to them the wishes of their great chief. The appeal was received with dead silence. It is said that Knowlton personally addressed a non-commissioned officer, a Frenchman, who was an old soldier. He did so only to receive the natural reply, "I am willing to be shot, but not to be hung." Knowlton felt that he must report his failure to Washington. But Nathan Hale, his youngest captain, broke the silence. "I will undertake it," he said. He had come late to the meeting. He was pale from recent sickness. But he saw an opportunity to serve, and he did the duty which came next his hand.

William Hull, afterward the major-general who commanded at Detroit, had been Hale's college classmate. He remonstrated with his friend on the danger of the task, and the ignominy which would attend its failure. "He said to him that it was not in the line of his duty, and that he was of too frank and open a temper to act successfully the part of a spy, or to face its dangers, which would probably lead to a disgraceful death." Hale replied, "I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to perform that service are imperious." These are the last words of his which can be cited until those which he spoke at the moment of his death. He promised Hull to take his arguments into consideration, but Hull never heard from him again.

In the second week of September he left the camp for Stamford with Stephen Hempstead, a sergeant in Webb's regiment, from whom we have the last direct account of his journey. With Hempstead and Asher Wright, who was his servant in camp, he left his uniform and some other articles of property. He crossed to Long Island in citizen's dress, and, as Hempstead thought, took with him his college diploma, meaning to assume the aspect of a Connecticut schoolmaster visiting New York in the hope to establish himself. He landed near Huntington, or Oyster Bay, and directed the boatman to return at a time fixed by him, the 20th of September. He made his way into New York, and there, for a week or more apparently, prosecuted his inquiries. He returned on the day fixed, and awaited his boat. It appeared, as he thought; and he made a signal from the shore. Alas! he had mistaken the boat. She was from an English frigate, which lay screened by a point of woods, and had come in for water. Hale attempted to retrace his steps, but was too late. He was seized and examined. Hidden in the soles of his shoes were his memoranda, in the Latin language. They compromised him at once. He was carried on board the frigate, and sent to New York the same day, well guarded.

It was at an unfortunate moment, if anyone expected tenderness from General Howe. Hale landed while the city was in the tenor of the great conflagration of September 21st. In that fire nearly a quarter of the town was burned down. The English supposed, rightly or not, that the fire had been begun by the Americans. The bells had been taken from the churches by order of the Provincial Congress. The fire-engines were out of order, and for a time it seemed impossible to check the flames. Two hundred persons were sent to jail upon the supposition that they were incendiaries. It is in the midst of such confusion that Hale is taken to General Howe's head-quarters, and there he meets his doom.

No testimony could be stronger against him than the papers on his person. He was not there to prevaricate, and he told them his rank and name. There was no trial, and Howe at once ordered that he should be hanged the next morning. Worse than this, had he known it, he was to be hanged by William Cunningham, the Provost-Major, a man whose brutality, through the war disgraced the British army. It is a satisfaction to know that Cunningham was hanged for his deserts in England, not many years after.[3]

Hale was confined for the night of September 21st in the greenhouse of the garden of Howe's head-quarters. This place was known as the Beckman Mansion, at Turtle Bay. This house was standing until within a few years.

Early the next day he was led to his death. "On the morning of the execution," said Captain Montresor, an English officer, "my station being near the fatal spot, I requested the Provost-Marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him. He wrote two letters; one to his mother and one to a brother officer. The Provost-Marshal destroyed the letters, and assigned as a reason that the rebels should not know that they had a man in their army who could die with so much firmness."

Hale asked for a Bible, but his request was refused. He was marched out by a guard and hanged upon an apple-tree in Rutgers's orchard. The place was near the present intersection of East Broadway and Market Streets. Cunningham asked him to make his dying "speech and confession." "I only regret," he said, "that I have but one life to lose for my country."[Back to Contents]