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/intr//INTRODUCTORY NOTE
/di/F/OR the earliest "Life," of Nathan Hale we are indebted to the late Mr. I. W. Stuart, of Hartford, who was fortunately drawn to the subject some fifty years ago, when sufficient material for a beginning was conveniently at hand, and when it was still possible to glean from personal recollections. His work, which appeared in two editions in 1856, has long been out of print, and in the interval our knowledge of Hale has widened.
The main source of new information is what we may now describe as Hale's correspondence, only a portion of which fell under the eye of, or was utilized by, Stuart. Limited in amount as this may appear to be, it is more than would be looked for in view of the fate that has befallen so much of the manuscript literature of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods. Of the letters of many another bright spirit of that time not a line remains. In the case of Hale we must deem ourselves happy that at least ten of his own letters have been preserved. Stuart produced four, with extracts from two others. Lossing found one at a later date, and in the present work three more are added
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and all printed, it is believed, in their complete form. Future biographers may increase the list.
This additional material reaches the writer's hand through the courtesy of individuals and societies. His acknowledgments are due to the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, for an unpublished letter from his granduncle, Nathan Hale, and for other letters credited in the Appendix. Dr. Hale's own contributions to the subject have been of signal assistance, a valuable addition being the diary of his grandfather, Enoch Hale, which throws light on the mooted question of Nathan's capture and execution. Through the favor of Mr. W. F. Havemeyer, of New York, we have Hale's letter with the list of the proprietors of his New London Academy, also Hale's book autograph and other suggestive material from his collection. Hale's letter to Miss Christophers is from the collection of the late John Mills Hale, Esq., of Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. Mr. Grenville Kane, of Tuxedo, New York, obliges us with a full copy of Hale's interesting letter—one of the best specimens from his pen—written to his uncle at Portsmouth. Hale's army commission is in the possession of Major Godfrey A. S. Wieners, of College Point, Long Island, who kindly permits its reproduction, necessarily in reduced form, in these pages. From him also we have a complete copy of Hale's letter with his schoolmaster autograph, which we believe is given here for the first time in facsimile. Mr. George E. Hoadley, of Hartford, long interested in everything pertaining to Nathan Hale, possesses many of his army receipts and various relics from Coventry, as well as most of Stuart's manuscripts. From him we have interesting facts respecting "Alice Adams," to whom Hale was engaged at the time of his death. n -
The Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, is the fortunate possessor of much the larger portion of the letters written to Hale, as well as of his army diary, basket and powder-horn. We are under obligations to the society and its librarian, Mr. Albert C. Bates, for the free use of the papers, from which considerable extracts are given. The relics also are reproduced from the originals. At Yale University there are reminders of Hale's college life in the shape of minutes of his debating society, Linonia, kept in his own hand as secretary, and other records bearing on the four years of his course. Through the courtesy of Professors Van Name and Dexter, librarians, facsimiles and copies of some of these papers have been secured, and their items help materially in bringing out Hale's personality. The New York Historical Society, Mr. Robert H. Kelby, librarian, contains in its invaluable archives one or more British orderly-books which throw light on disputed points respecting Hale's capture and execution, and add something to our knowledge of the military situation which he was endeavoring to unravel for Washington. Nothing more important has appeared of late years than Lord Howe's order announcing Hale's fate, a facsimile of which, through the favor of the society, is here reproduced. The portrait of Captain Montressor, who preserved Hale's last words for us, is from a volume in its collection. In the unpublished logs of the British warships, the Halifax and the Cerberus, London Record Office, we also find important items.
The illustrations, or group of Hale memorials, in the volume are produced by Mr. Edward Bierstadt's process.
While Mr. Stuart's work is to be appreciated as the pioneer biography in the field, we now know that he accepted tradition too freely. This was in a sense unavoid-
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able. From the material referred to above and other sources of information, it has become possible to reverse some incorrect impressions. The power of Hale's story lies in the simple record.
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- College of the City of New York,
- September 21, 1901.
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/ch//ANCESTRY AND HOME—THE HALES AND THE STRONGS
OF the several memorials now honoring the name of Nathan Hale, it is the earliest one that appeals with a special tenderness, that draws us nearest to himself and revives the associations of his lifetime the most faithfully. It is the usual reminder—the quaint and primitive headstone in the burial-ground of his birthplace, set up about a century ago by the loving hands of his family. Small and unpretentious, cut from the ledges of the neighborhood and hardly observed in the presence of the public monument on another site, it holds a story in its silent companionship with the graves around and the fading landmarks and traditions of
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the old town which most of all we would wish to read. In its very retirement the spot recalls the self-centered life of the community of colonial times, in which plain and honest people predominated, who filled out the round of daily duties as one of the objects of their existence, who held views on questions of the day and whose higher care was so to live that they might be gathered to their fathers. Hale sprung from a community like this. It was a society, not any wise exceptional, from which it was possible for individual members, young or old, to pass out into more absorbing spheres and act a great part as ingenuously as they might have acted a lesser one at home, quite unconscious of or indifferent to the fact that the world was looking on.
The simple and yet impressive inscription on this headpiece may serve as a starting-point or text for the biographer:
/bc// Durable stone preserve the monumental record. Nathan Hale, Esq., a Capt. in the army of the United States, who was born June 6th, 1755, and received the first honors of Yale College, Sept., 1773, resigned his life a sacrifice to his Country's liberty at New York, Sept. 22nd, 1776. Etatis 22d //bc/
There is more to the inscription referring to his parents and a younger brother, but in the case of Nathan, those who knew him emphasize the two
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salient facts of his brief life, that in two fields in which he had been left to his own resources, in college and in his country's service, he fulfilled all and more than could be expected of him. The headstone tells us of a young man of gifts and purpose and promise, which the record from every other source amply confirms.
As for our special and public interest in Hale, it centers in the last twenty days of his life. It is the interest which common humanity feels and expresses in an act of rare devotion, where the act is performed less from impulse than in response to the call of duty fortified by calm reflection and resolutely followed to the end. There is also added the charm of his character and his youth. Scarcely turned the age of twenty-one, he rose to the demands of an extreme occasion and played the man. It was in those closing days, after more than a year's routine in the army, that he seems to have become newly impressed with his obligations to the cause he was engaged in. Instead of waiting for opportunities of service, he now began to seek them, when, unexpectedly, an opportunity more ominous than attractive presented itself which he felt that he must accept irrespective of consequences. In accepting it he sealed his fate. Whatever sentiment may attach to the particular mission he undertook, we justly regard his sacrifice as an ideal act of patriotism. With a touching and noble expression of
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regret that he could do no more, he surrendered in his country's behalf the most that a man can give—his life and his good name.
Regarding his previous career there would be little more to say of him under ordinary circumstances that could not be said of many other young men of his day, and which is usually left unsaid. History, however, reserves the shining examples to herself, and frequently makes one heroic episode consecrate a lifetime. So Hale becomes in a way endeared to us through all his years. The story of the youth who could die so bravely and unselfishly can never lose its interest and attraction, especially if it goes far toward explaining the end; and enough of detail survives to enable us to follow it with a fair degree of consistency, and to present the picture with some approach to the real outlines. More than enough exists to reassure us, were that necessary, that posterity has made no mistake in its estimate of his personal worth or recognition of his views of duty and service, and that the tributes and honors to his memory are rightly bestowed.
If we adopt a favorite method and presume to account in part for the qualities which Hale exhibited through the lives that had been lived before him, the subject will present few difficulties. There are no gaps in the record of his lineage. Both in the paternal and maternal lines it can be traced continuously to our American beginnings. It seems
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/cap//Hale Headstone, South Coventry Cemetery
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likewise to contain its full proportion of individual histories, in which one may detect a thread of family characteristics or gauge the blood and fiber of the stock represented. As in a hundred other cases, also, here and there, in the direct and collateral branches, at different points and in different generations, we meet with some fine development. Some strain of superiority or rare worth will be found asserting itself in the person of a distinguished judge, an eminent divine, a public benefactor, or again in the person of a youthful patriot. Ancestry in those days meant much. The good people not only believed in the transmission of qualities and observed resemblances, but they highly valued the living influence of one generation upon another—an influence which modern conditions are gradually lessening. Neighbors then, more often than not, were relatives. Hale could remember his great-grandfather, and of his grandmother's graces and guardianship over him he himself speaks with appreciation and feeling. There is material here for the study of heredity and the influence or predominance of individualism in our national growth.
The ships that sailed into Massachusetts Bay in the memorable years between 1630 and 1640 brought over what local historians like to call much "precious freight." They brought more than one stout heart and devoted group, which Old England could ill afford to spare, but in whom New Eng-
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land found her making. Among these first comers—commonwealth builders as they were to prove—were the ancestors of Nathan Hale. The names of his father, Richard Hale, and his mother, Elizabeth Strong, take us back to their great-grandparents, the Hales and the Strongs, who followed Governor Winthrop from England to Boston to help break ground for the new settlements on the Charles River and the Connecticut. In later years their names appear again at this point in the wilderness or that town on the coast, showing that they took their part abreast with the others in the active work of colonization.
On the father's side the immigrant was Robert Hale, who came of the old and knighted family of Hales in Kent. That he cared little for crests or coats of arms and much more for a new start in life and a freer atmosphere may perhaps be inferred from his leaving England at one of the earliest opportunities. Making Charlestown, Massachusetts, his permanent home, he assisted in founding the church there in 1632, and became deacon, selectman, ensign, and surveyor. Evidently an energetic and thrifty individual—in occupation a blacksmith—he kept increasing his acres until he owned fields and lots on Charlestown Neck, along the Mystic River, and adjoining the roads in the vicinity which were to become the scene of some lively warfare in 1775. One of his neighbors, following him two
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or three years later, was that George Bunker whose famous hill stands in the new world for all and more than Marathon's mound has so long stood in the old. It was to remain for a descendant of his in the fifth generation—the young captain of 1776—to assist in ridding the ancestral farm of an enemy's presence. Robert Hale's prosperity and intelligence no doubt led him to share in the desire which the leading colonists felt to educate preachers for their multiplying churches on their own soil, and we presently find him sending his eldest son, John, to Harvard College.
This was the Rev. John Hale, graduated in 1657, who was the first and long-settled pastor at Beverly, just beyond Salem, Massachusetts. He is described as a representative man, of recognized abilities, generous disposition, public-spirited, and, of course, a Calvinist of the prevailing robust type. The occasional hardships and misfortunes of his people he made his own. In 1676, when King Philip's war caused distress, he directed the selectmen of the parish to dispose of £6, about one twelfth of his year's salary, for the general defense. In 1690, he went as chaplain on Phips' disastrous expedition against Quebec, not only to fight the annoying Frenchman, but also to watch over a company of his own young parishioners. Inevitably, with Salem so near, he was identified with the witchcraft trials, but latterly, through a personal
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experience, was convinced of the grave error of the proceedings, and in 1697 issued a "Modest Inquiry" into the nature of the delusion. "Such," he writes, "was the darkness of that day, the tortures and lamentations of the afflicted, and the power of former precedents, that we walked in the clouds and could not see our way;" but, as he continues in another connection, "observing the events of that sad catastrophe, Anno 1692, I was brought to a more strict scanning of the principles I had imbibed, and by scanning, to question, and by questioning at length to reject many of them." His revulsion against the painful business, even though partial, could only have deepened his human sympathies and drawn him nearer to his flock. Upon his death or earlier, his family, as in so many other instances, dispersed to find new fields. One son remained at Beverly, another became a pastor and settled at Ashford, Connecticut, and a third son, Samuel, moved along the coast, first to Newburyport and then to Portsmouth.
The line we are following comes down through this Samuel Hale. There is little recorded of him, but it is to be noticed that, like his father and grandfather, he was represented by a son at Harvard, also named Samuel, who remained at Portsmouth, and of whom we shall hear again as a good citizen, defender of his country, and notable schoolmaster. Another son, named Richard, of more interest to
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us, fell into the general drift, as it would appear, looked about for richer soil, perhaps a less rigorous climate, and with other wide-awake farmers settled in a new locality. About 1744, a young, unmarried man, he found his way into Connecticut and made choice of his future home in the town of Coventry, some twenty miles east of Hartford. This Richard, fourth from the immigrant, was the father of our Nathan Hale.
Coventry, Connecticut, Nathan's birthplace, was a town laid out in 1708, by authority of the General Assembly of the colony, from a tract acquired by private proprietors from the tribe of Mohegan Indians. It had been deeded by the sachem "Joshua" to residents of Hartford, who offered its farm lands and plots to new settlers. The older towns had been settled by groups of families as a measure of safety, while the later ones depended more on individual comers. But they all grew apace, some towns throwing out others beyond them and within easy reach—the meeting-house always the center—until in the brief period of one hundred and fifty years, or by the time of the Revolution, the population of New England had increased to over seven hundred thousand, compactly placed, self-governed, homogeneous, and fit to enter upon national life. For these reasons this section could do more and suffered less than other colonies in the struggle for independence whenever the enemy threatened it with vengeance.
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And how these people, we may note in passing, seem to have clung even in the third generation to the traditions of home life in the mother-country! It was no mere coincidence that the Connecticut Assembly named the town in question after old Coventry in England. The town names in the central and eastern counties in this colony, as in Massachusetts, and in scarcely less degree in other colonies, tell of the genuine interest they long retained in the birthplaces of their grandparents, whatever they may have thought of revenue acts, commercial monopoly, and ministerial appointments; and in nearly every household could have been found, as heirlooms distributed by gift or the wills of the first settlers, more than one tangible piece of evidence that Old England was not altogether forgotten by the New. So not only will one see on the map the names of Ashford and Bolton and Canterbury and Chatham and Chester; of Colchester, Coventry, Derby, Durham, Essex, Glastonbury, and Guilford; of Hartford, Kent, Lyme, Milford, New Haven, and New London; of Norwalk, Norwich, Pomfret, Preston, Stamford, Stratford, Windsor, and Woodstock; but in their homesteads he would have seen at that date the chairs and chests, the books and pieces of plate, the spoons, dishes, buckles, and quilts, and the family Bible, with its precious record of births, marriages, and deaths, which their possessors prized for their ancestral associations across the sea.
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Upon Hale's mother's side the story of descent is in some respects a repetition of his father's. That young Nathan himself would have dwelt with a most affectionate interest on what he knew of it may be gathered from some of the last expressions we have from his pen. To his brother Enoch he wrote from camp: "This will probably find you in Coventry; if so, remember me to all my friends, particularly belonging to the family. Forget not frequently to visit and strongly to represent my duty to our good grandmother Strong. Has she not repeatedly favored us with her tender, most important advice? The natural tie is sufficient, but increased by so much goodness, our gratitude cannot be too sensible." Hale's mother was not then living, but in her mother, as just described, we doubtless see the temperament which ruled her own household. That she was gentle, true, and watchful may be readily assumed, and perhaps we perceive some of her stronger traits of character reflected and emphasized in those of her son. "Our good grandmother Strong" draws us equally to the youth whose love and remembrance were deep and manly, and to the lineage which produced such womanhood. But the story is not exceptional. The Strongs, like the Hales, were a typical family through whom, in connection with the many others with corresponding or varying records, we are enabled to observe the working of domestic and social influences in colonial life. n -
The head of the line here was Elder John Strong, who in the spring of 1630 sailed from Plymouth, England, in the ship Mary and John and helped in the founding of Dorchester, south of Boston. His numerous descendants—quite a remarkable list—are scattered to-day throughout the country. Passing on to Taunton and then to Windsor, Connecticut, he returned to Massachusetts in 1659, and with a few others, for the third time, started a new settlement, which became Northampton. His grandsons, Joseph and Elnathan, settled in Connecticut, the former at Coventry, about 1715, twenty or thirty years before Richard Hale. This Joseph, known as Justice Joseph Strong, grew up with the place and became a leading townsman, filling the offices of treasurer and justice of the peace for many years and representing Coventry in the General Assembly for sixty-five sessions. Vigorous, both mentally and physically, he could preside at a town meeting in his ninetieth year. He was succeeded in some of his offices and a portion of his lands by his son, also Joseph, generally called Captain Joseph Strong. In 1724 this Joseph married his second cousin, Elizabeth Strong, daughter of Preserved Strong, the "grandmother" referred to above; and it was their eldest daughter, again Elizabeth, fifth from the immigrant, who became the wife of Richard and the mother of Nathan Hale.
Hale's immediate ancestors were thus among the
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first inhabitants and co-builders of his native place, and exercised no little influence on the gathering community. It had received its name in 1711, and by 1775 it ranked as a considerable town in the colony. Success seems to have attended the enterprise and hard labors of these families. From the town records we learn that as early as 1724 Justice Strong was able to turn over to his son, Captain Strong, a farm of ninety acres, in consideration of "parental love and affection," and that Richard Hale, in 1745, could purchase from Talcott and Lathrop, apparently two of the original proprietors of the Coventry tract, an extensive farm of two hundred and forty acres. These lands lay in the southern part of the survey, or in what is now the separate town of South Coventry. The Strong homestead, in which Hale's mother was probably born, was pulled down a number of years ago, while the Hale homestead, which still stands in good condition, is understood not to be the original dwelling in which Nathan was born, but one dating from about the beginning of the Revolution and with which he was familiar.
Of Hale's boyhood and home life we could expect to know but little so far as records are concerned. Those years, and indeed the round of domestic experiences, were much alike in the colony circles. From glimpses, traditions, and fragmentary diaries a picture could be drawn which, in its
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perspective, would do for all. Early marriages were the rule. Hale's father, born February 28, 1717, was twenty-nine; his mother, born February 7, 1727, was nineteen. They were married in Coventry, May 2, 1746, and lived and died in the place. Their son Nathan—to whose memory these pages are dedicated—was born June 6, 1755, the fifth boy and sixth child in the family of twelve. He had eight brothers and three sisters, two dying in infancy. David and Jonathan were twins. His elder sister, being, like her mother and grandmother, the eldest daughter, bore the same name, Elizabeth. The other children were Samuel, John, Joseph, Enoch, Richard, Billy, Joanna, and Susanna, several of whom married and have descendants living. Nathan may have been named after one of the Nathans either on the Strong or Hale side of the house, with the Scriptural association also in mind.
On an ample farm in high and rolling country near the beautiful Lake Waugaumbaug of the Mohegans, and with good neighbors about, the lines of the family seem to have been pleasantly cast. The responsibilities were great, but bravely met by the parents. Of the head of the house it is said that "never a man worked so hard for both worlds as Deacon Hale." The town and ecclesiastical society confided in him. He held offices from each. For a few terms in succession the Coventry deputies to the Connecticut Assembly were Hale and
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/cap//Hale Monument and Homestead, South Coventry, Connecticut
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/cap/ty=2/From Hale's monument to the homestead the distance is about three miles. Near the former, facing the town green and overlooking the lake, stood the old Congregational meeting-house which Hale's family attended. It was burned down several years ago. The parsonage was a few rods south of it. As Hale's father and grandfather Strong were deacons of the church, and the pastor. Dr. Huntington, Nathan's instructor in his preparation for college, the boy was surrounded by all the religious influences which New England Congregationalism sought to extend. His career, brief as it was, shows how far his character was molded by them.
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Strong. Of the mother we have already formed an impression—certainly a domestic and devoted woman, the fitting link between the "good grandmother" and more than one superior child and descendant. The six things such a family, young and old, would have to think of and live for the year round were home, farm, church, school, chores, play. Stuart, Hale's first biographer, describes it as "a quiet, strict, godly household, where the Bible ruled and family prayers never failed, nor was grace ever omitted at meals, nor work done after sundown on a Saturday night." One item would stagger the modern parent—not only clothes for twelve, but the cloth must be spun at home! It was so at the Hales'. Work on the farm should have gone along handily, as there were boys enough to call upon. All, of course, had some schooling. Whether Nathan and the others attended the original Coventry school-house, which, by town-meeting vote, was to be twenty feet long and eighteen feet wide, or a later school-house, now transformed into a dwelling, is uncertain. By the same vote the schoolmaster's wages were fixed at eleven pounds for the winter quarter, and the pupils' enjoyment of the term depended upon his disposition and the depth of the snow. The pastimes were the pastimes of to-day in the farming towns. "Nathan"—quoting Stuart again—"early exhibited a fondness for those rural sports to which such a birthplace and scenery na-
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turally invited him. He loved the gun and fishing-rod, and exhibited great ingenuity in fashioning juvenile implements of every sort. He was fond of running, leaping, wrestling, firing at a mark, throwing, lifting, playing ball. In consequence, his infancy, at first feeble, soon hardened by simple diet and exercise into a firm boyhood. And with the growth of his body his mind, naturally bright and active, developed rapidly. He mastered his books with ease, was fond of reading out of school, and was constantly applying his information." If, according to present standards, the boys' acquirements of that day were simple, perhaps their absorptive powers were more active and tenacious. In those interesting years young Nathan and his fellows could not but have added to the "three R's" and their accompaniments the more valuable impressions and knowledge—more valuable in view of the great struggle they were soon to enter—to be derived from ordinary listening and observation when their fathers and elder brothers returned from the campaigns against the French to tell of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Quebec, or when, a little later, the Stamp Act brought them all to their feet in protest and revolt.
When Hale was twelve years old he lost his mother. She died April 21, 1767, at the age of forty. We infer that his future career had already been decided upon, or at least that he was to receive
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a college education, and no doubt the boy was happy in the prospect. If, according to early recollections of the family, his mother was more anxious and urgent than others in the matter, it is not difficult to see what influences beyond her own wishes and perhaps intuitive appreciation of Nathan's character and talents may have had weight. The representation of college-bred men among the Strongs in Connecticut was increasing. Hale's own uncle, his mother's younger brother, Rev. Joseph Strong, a graduate of Yale College in the class of 1749, was at that date the settled pastor over the village church of Salmon Brook in Granby, Connecticut, northwest of Coventry, while Rev. Nathan Strong, class of 1742, his mother's second cousin, was settled over the north parish of his own town, but a few miles away. The latter's son, also Nathan, who was to become a distinguished divine in the State, was just then, in 1767, a student in the college, where we shall meet with him a little later as one of Hale's instructors. Another son, Joseph, was preparing to enter the same institution. Relationships of all degrees were made much of in those days, the more so where the relatives were parish ministers; and when the Rev. "Uncle" Strong or the Rev. "Cousin" Strong was housed over the Sabbath at Deacon Strong's or Deacon Hale's, it was an event of some social consequence. On these and like occasions the rising generation would come under
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casual inspection and comment, and if some youth in the circle seemed to show both spiritual and intellectual promise, he might be marked as one to succeed the learned elders, and his parents be advised to enter him for the profession. The ranks of that influential colonial body, the New England clergy, were filled much in this way, and in the decisions the mothers' views and hopes for their sons were not to be ignored.
However it may have been in this case, we have the fact that among the boys of the family Nathan and his next elder brother, Enoch, were to go to college. Whether they were then, at that early age, expecting to enter the ministry, we cannot say. There was time enough for a final decision later, even after graduation. The present task was preparation. Except in a few of the larger towns where preparatory schools existed, the boys of that time were generally fitted for college by the minister of their parish. Benjamin Tallmadge, one of Hale's classmates, states in his "Autobiography" that he and other boys were so prepared by his father, pastor at Brookhaven, Long Island. Hale's pastor was the Rev. Dr. Joseph Huntington, brother of the Hon. Samuel Huntington, subsequently one of the presidents of the Continental Congress and Governor of Connecticut. He was one of the more prominent of the colony ministers, inclined to liberality in his theological views and pronounced
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in his sympathies with America in the Revolutionary struggle. Reviewing events in an election sermon after the war, he said: "We once loved Britain most dearly, but Britain the tyrant we could not love. Our souls abhorred her measures. We rose from the dust, where we had been long prostrate. Our breasts glowed with noble ardor. We invoked the God of our fathers and we took the field." The old parsonage still stands in altered shape on Coventry hill, and there without doubt young Nathan and his brother Enoch regularly recited to Mr. Huntington from such Latin authors as Eutropius, Nepos, Virgil, Cicero, and Horace—John Trumbull, the painter, who fitted at Norwich about the same period, stating that these were the books he had to study—while at times the parson must have wandered from the lessons to denounce the policy of the mother-country toward the colonies and inspire the boys with his own vision of the greatness of the new nation destined to grow up here and which it would be theirs to live in. In September, 1769, the two brothers entered the freshman class at Yale College, Nathan then being in his fifteenth year.
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/ch//HALE IN COLLEGE—FOUR YEARS AT YALE (1769–1773)
IN his new sphere, in the student world now opening to him, it becomes possible to form some sort of personal acquaintance with Hale. Here through the record as well as incidentally through his fellows and instructors who long cherished their recollections of him the main outlines of his course can be followed. If we have little from his own pen, if we must forego an insight into his inner self as he might have reflected it in letters or in entries of a private journal—material which seldom existed and is rarely found—we can still see and appreciate him in his surroundings. The intimate and whole-souled friendships of college days are proverbial, and Hale seems to have had his full share of them. It is from this source largely
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that we are assured of his manliness, scholarship, attractive personality and the general high tone of his nature. Where he is recalled as "a much loved classmate," there is a sweetness and a value in the memory peculiarly its own; or if there are references, though brief, to his cultivated mind and generous impulses, or to his unassuming air and quiet dignity, or to his popularity as seen in the honors voted him, and again to the promise of his success in life, we have a recognized basis from which to estimate his worth. He should be understood by the student of to-day. Every college generation produces young men who impress themselves upon their associates somewhat as Hale did in his time.
In 1769, Yale College at New Haven was but a town academy compared with the spreading university now celebrating two hundred years of growth. But relatively its usefulness and influence were hardly less marked. Its president was Rev. Dr. Naphtali Daggett. Among its different instructors were several exceptionally able men, such as John Trumbull, John Davenport, Joseph Howe, Nathan Strong and Timothy Dwight. In one year or another Hale was probably taught by all. The last three—recent graduates who had returned to be tutors at the college—gave promise of eminence which Strong and Dwight fulfilled, Dwight becoming a distinguished president of Yale and Strong a shining light of the Hartford pulpit. Howe, also a
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preacher, died early, just as his talents were attracting attention. Hale notes his death in his army diary. Strong was Hale's relative and fellow townsman referred to in the previous chapter, with both of whom Dwight was also distantly connected as being a descendant of Elder Strong of Northampton. Our young student thus found himself, certainly in his junior and senior years, among personal friends, and in these friends he was equally fortunate in finding the best of teachers and advisers. How highly and fondly Dwight came to regard him will appear in another connection.
During Hale's course there were about one hundred students in the four classes. His own, the class of 1773, was the largest, with its thirty-six graduates. At that date three buildings stood on the college grounds. One of them remains—the dormitory, South Middle, originally called "Connecticut Hall," in which Hale must have roomed during one or more of his years. Supervision of the little community was of the parental order. There was a monastic as well as Puritan touch in the moral and religious obligations enjoined—the living of blameless lives, the reading of the Scriptures as the fountain of light and truth, and the attendance on public and private devotions. Offenses or delinquencies were punishable largely by fines—a survival of the practice in the medieval guilds and corporations—the fines ranging from a penny for
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absence from morning or evening prayers to eight shillings or suspension or expulsion for repeated and glaring misdemeanors. Those were the days, too, when the most formal outward respect must be shown to the college authorities. All the students were to stand uncovered whenever the President passed along the walks, and all were to bow when he went in or out of the chapel. There were regular study hours then, when the campus was to be quiet, when singing, loud talking and "all screamings and hollowings" around the buildings were finable. The students boarded in "Commons," managed by steward and butler, and their luxuries included pipes and tobacco, cider and strong beer. The freshmen were a much abused class, their insignificance even being officially recognized. Among other indignities, they were obliged, within limits, to be waiters and messengers to upper-class men. We have a description of campus customs and college costume in the reminiscences of Oliver Wolcott, Hamilton's successor as Secretary of the Treasury, in the very summer of 1773 when Hale was about to graduate.
/fb// "I went up to college in the evening," he writes "to observe the scene of my future exploits with emotions of awe and reverence. Men in black robes, white wigs and high cocked hats, young men dressed in camblet gowns, passed us in small groups. The men in robes and wigs I was told were professors; the young men in gowns were
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students. There were young men in black silk gowns, some with bands and others without. These were either tutors in the college or resident graduates to whom the title of 'Sir' was accorded. When we entered the college yard a new scene was presented. There was a class who wore no gowns and who walked but never ran or jumped in the yard. They appeared much in awe or looked surlily after they passed by the young men habited in gowns and staves. Some of the young gownsmen treated those who wore neither hats or gowns in the yard with harshness and what I thought indignity. I give an instance: 'Nevill, go to my room, middle story of old college, No. —, and take from it a pitcher, fill it from the pump, place it in my room and stay there till my return.' The domineering young men I was told were scholars or students of the sophomore class, and those without hats and gowns and who walked in the yard were freshmen, who out of the hours of study were waiters or servants to the authority, the president, professors, tutors and undergraduates." (Wolcott Memorial, p. 225.) //fb/
But behind this exterior could be found that freedom, companionship and communistic enthusiasm which have always made the American student's life one of the happiest of his experiences. Those generally robust sons of colonial parents were not likely to spend four years in tame existence. The numerous offenses mentioned in the penal laws of the college show how far their spirits had to be curbed. They had their recreations, sports and occasional wild pranks; and if we read aright, they resented impositions, one instance occurring in
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Hale's day, when John Brown, of the class of 1771, afterwards a gallant officer who fell in the Revolution, was one of the leaders in a revolt against the quality, it would seem, of college "commons," and left with others until grievances were redressed.
To Hale and his brother college life must have been a constant enjoyment, and in view of their training it could have been no task for them to conform to the regulations. By the fortunate preservation of three letters from their father—plain, homely missives, with the usual distorted spelling, but very uncommon as records and valuable to us just now for their tenderness, injunctions and hard fact—we get a few glimpses of the boys in their new relations. Whether as freshmen or sophomores, they were addressed as "Dear Children," and reminded of their duties. They had written home on December 7, 1769, two months after entrance, that they were comfortably settled, and on the 26th their parent replies: "I hope you will carefully mind your studies that your time be not lost and that you will mind all the orders of College with care." Above all, they were not to forget their devotions or chapel prayers. A year later he wrote in the same vein, and added: "Shun all vice, especially card-playing." The common view of this diversion was still in harmony with the spirit of the college rules of 1745, under which play at cards, dice or on a wager was subject to fine, to be fol-
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lowed on the third offense by expulsion. As to a student's expenses, then as now, they were always pending, and the bills of the country boys were probably settled irregularly. Exchange and barter were much out of vogue in the larger towns, and the farmer could not pay his sons' board with the wheat in his barn. In their freshman year Richard Hale tells his children that he will send them some money soon, perhaps by "Mr. Sherman"—Roger Sherman, no doubt—when he returns from his circuit, and he inquires whether it would do to let their account run until he could go to town himself in May and clear it up. In the following year he hopes to forward what cash they need "when Sr. Strong comes to Coventry"—this clearly being their graduate cousin, "Sir" Nathan Strong, who appears to have been continuing his studies at the college before he became tutor. At vacation times their own horses would be driven down for them, or they could hire some in New Haven. The majority of Connecticut boys wore suits cut from homespun, and the Hales had theirs from Coventry. Toward the end of their sophomore year one of them was called home to be fitted to a suit, if he could obtain leave and if they hoped to have new clothes for the coming Commencement. "I sopose," writes Mr. Hale—to be spared the protest with which the suggestion would be received by the modern sophomore—"I sopose that one mea-
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sure will do for both of you." During their third year an epidemic of measles broke out in the college, both boys being taken down. Tallmadge states that in his case he could do little studying during parts of his junior and senior years.
Hale made the most of the curriculum, and at the end stood among the best scholars and most popular men of his class. During the first two years there was some grinding study through "the three learned tongues"—Greek, Latin and Hebrew—with logic, rhetoric and geometry interspersed; while in the last two, natural philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, metaphysics and ethics completed the sum of their accomplishments. On Fridays the students, about six at a time, were to declaim before their fellows in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and "in no other language without special leave from the President." Saturday forenoons were devoted to the study of divinity. Fines followed the neglect of all exercises. In the class-rooms Enoch Hale was known as Hale primus, and Nathan, Hale secundus, a practice long continued in New England Latin grammar schools as well. That some students found the routine irksome is not surprising, and when Roger Alden afterwards wrote to Hale from his school-room that he dreaded its hours as much as ever he did "the morning prayer bell or Saturday noon recitations," his complaint was only a distant precursor of changes that were to end in the elimi-
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nation of both. The prayer bell still rings, but not at half-past four a.m. in the summer time and half past five in the winter—the startling hours when Alden and Hale heard it.
As a literary diversion the students established debating societies. Two, well known to all Yale graduates, survived—"Linonia," founded in 1753, and "The Brothers in Unity," in 1768. After more than a century's existence, both have been dissolved. Former alumni, distinguished at the bar, in Congress or in the pulpit, owed something of their rhetorical training to these societies. The Hales belonged to Linonia and took an active interest in it, Nathan especially. In his junior year, 1771, he became its secretary or "scribe" and his book of well-kept minutes is still preserved in the university library. That the members improved and enjoyed themselves the entries fully bear out. Their exercises on different evenings were debates, narrations, addresses, dialogues and a system of mutual questions and answers. To better their conversation and literary style, they could criticize each other's grammar and choice of words. On one occasion they debated the question whether it was right to enslave the African. Nathan's name frequently appears among the speakers, as on December 23, 1771, when another member had succeeded him as scribe, "The meeting was opened with a very entertaining narration by Hale 2d;" or again, the meeting of
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August 5, 1772, "closed with a speech delivered by Hale 2d." The dramatic art seems to have been in high favor with these embryo ministers, warriors and statesmen, and we find them at intervals forgetting Edwards on the Will, or Van Mastricht on Regeneration, or President Clap on the Foundation of Moral Virtue, to entertain themselves and their friends with the play of the "Conscious Lovers," or the "West Indian," or the "Toy Shop," or the "Beaux' Stratagem." In the two latter Hale took a part with éclat, while in the caste of the first were included no less a trio than "Sirs" Dwight, Davenport and Williams. The "West Indian" was announced as a new comedy to be played on the occasion of Linonia's twentieth anniversary, April 3, 1773, at the house of Mr. Thomas Atwater. The entertainment was a pronounced success. "Both the scenery and action," says the secretary, "were on all hands allowed to be superior to anything of the kind heretofore exhibited on the like occasion. The whole received peculiar beauty from the officers appearing dressed in regimentals and the actresses in full and elegant suits of lady's apparel. The last scene was no sooner closed than the company testified their satisfaction by the clapping of hands. . . . An epilogue made expressly on the occasion and delivered by Hale 2d was received with approbation." There was also a musical dialogue sung by two members "in the characters of Damon and Clora." n -
That Hale was held in deserved esteem by his fellows is further evidenced by the fact that he was the first chancellor, or president, of Linonia from his class. In later years and doubtless it was so then, this was regarded as among the highest of college honors in the gift of the students. Portions of one of his addresses before the society are given in the /Appendix/./r/ As to his literary tastes, it would be enough to know that they were recognized and appreciated by Timothy Dwight, who, with other young instructors, was just at that time moving to raise the standard of culture at the college, especially in the direction of composition, oratory and criticism. Dwight's letter to Hale of February 20, 1776, is doubly interesting as indicating one of the methods by which an author of that day announced his efforts to the public and as hinting at his friend's intellectual bent and qualities of heart. The former was preparing to publish his epic poem, the "Conquest of Canaan," and he sought the good offices of Hale in introducing it to his acquaintances. "To a person of Mr. Hale's character," he wrote him, "motives of friendship apart, one's fondness for the liberal arts would be a sufficient excuse for calling his attention to the work;" and he adds, "I esteem myself happy in reflecting that the person who may confer this obligation is a gentleman, of whose po-
/rt// 1: Also a word in regard to Hale's connection with Linonia's library and a note from Tallmadge.
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liteness and benevolence I have already experienced so frequent and so undoubted assurances."
Commencement day for the class of 1773 fell on September 3. It was the annual grand occasion both for college and the town, when dignitaries of the colony and the lights of its churches, together with numerous citizens, assembled in the meetinghouse on the New Haven green to listen to the graduation exercises. An all-day function, it was continued as such to quite recent years, though losing its varied character. A report of it appears in The Connecticut Journal and New Haven Post Boy, now one of the rarest of colonial newspapers. In the forenoon the salutatory address was delivered by John Palsgrave Wyllys, of Hartford, who, like Hale, early entered into the Revolutionary War and after fourteen years of service fell in action with the Indians on the western frontier. A "syllogistic disputation" followed, and then came a forensic debate by Messrs. Beckwith, Fairchild, Flint and Mead on the question, "Whether a large metropolis would be of public advantage to the Colony." Messrs. Alden, Keyes and Marvin—all three to become Revolutionary officers—rendered a dialogue in English on the three learned professions, and Sir Williams delivered an English oration on Prejudice. In the afternoon Sir Davenport resumed the exercises with an English oration on the state of the private schools in Connecticut. Another syllogistic dispute—this one
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in Latin—followed, and the Commencement closed with what was evidently the treat of the day—a second forensic debate by Messrs. Hale, Robinson, Sampson and Tallmadge on the then pertinent question, "Whether the Education of Daughters be not, without any just reason, more neglected than that of Sons." Quite possibly, as some writer's state, Hale took the side of the daughters, with whom we know him to have been a general favorite.
As our young graduate now goes out into the world after a successful course in college, carrying with him all the honors and good wishes he could desire, he is much less the stranger to us that he would have been without this experience. We shall come to know him better during the next three years. Friends and classmates will think too highly of him not to keep up a correspondence, and it is their letters that throw the side-lights we need on his personality. Not long after his death some one of his contemporaries in New Haven, an acquaintance and probably college companion, remembered him with a eulogy in which, with due allowance for the poetic feeling and license in the case, we doubtless have a more or less faithful picture or impression of Hale. He is handed down to us by his Alma Mater, we may say, as a most attractive and superior fellow, a son of whose acquirements within her walls she was proud, and for whom an enviable future might be predicted.
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/po// "Erect and tall, his well-proportioned frame, Vigorous and active, as electric flame; His manly limbs had symmetry and grace, And innate goodness marked his beauteous face; His fancy lively, and his genius great, His solid judgment shone in grave debate; For erudition far beyond his years; At Yale distinguished above all his peers; Speak, ye who knew him while a pupil there, His numerous virtues to the world declare; His blameless carriage and his modest air, Above the vain parade and idle show Which mark the coxcomb and the empty beau; Removed from envy, malice, pride, and strife, He walked through goodness as he walked through life; A kinder brother nature never knew, A child more duteous or a friend more true."/r/
Recollections bear out this description. Those who knew him, and others who gathered details and traditions as early as 1835, tell us that he was a noticeably fine-looking youth, nearly six feet in height, broad-chested, ruddy in complexion, with expressive features, a musical voice, and a presence that was at once natural and commanding. Stories are told of his athletic skill. A happy manner, generous disposition and social aptitude graced the stronger side of his character. He was evidently mature for his years—maturer than his companions—and
/rt// 1: The poem was first published in the American Historical Magazine in 1836.
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though not yet twenty, was about to enter active life with much of a man's equipment. Among his New Haven friends Hale counted Dr. Æneas Munson, long a well-known physician of the place. In 1836 his son, also Dr. Æneas Munson, still remembered by old residents, wrote to the magazine referred to above: "Nathan Hale I jwas acquainted with from his frequent visits at my father's house, while an academical student. His own remarks and the remarks of my father left at that period an indelible impression on my mind." On one of these occasions, as Hale left the house, the elder Munson observed: "That man is a diamond of the first water, calculated to excel in any station he assumes. He is a gentleman and a scholar, and last, though not least of his qualifications, a Christian." And by way of appeal to the editor the younger doctor adds, before any memorials to their friend were erected: "Cannot you rouse the dormant energies of an ungrateful republic, in the case of Captain Hale, to mark the spot where so much virtue and patriotism moulder with his native dust?"
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/cap//Statue of Nathan Hale, Wadsworth Athenæum, Hartford
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/ch//HALE AS SCHOOLMASTER—AT EAST HADDAM AND NEW LONDON
UPON graduation, or in the early fall of 1773, Nathan visited his uncle, Samuel Hale, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This was his father's brother—already mentioned—a graduate of Harvard College, who was the well-known head of the leading school in that colony, and was addressed as "Major" on account of his rank and services at Cape Breton and the siege of Louisburg. What Hale had to say of this trip and his own affairs appears in the interesting letter he afterwards wrote to Portsmouth, and from which we shall have occasion to quote. Returning to Connecticut, he followed his uncle's lines and became schoolmaster. This was the usual step before entering upon a calling. Professional departments and labyrinthine post-
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graduate courses, in which the "Sirs" could continue their studies to an advanced point, were yet to be evolved as the crown of the higher education. About the most dignified position to which the teacher of that day could aspire was a tutorship at the college, and there places were not permanent. Few could look beyond the pedagogue's desk either for temporary or lifelong occupation. What Hale's future plans were beyond his schoolmaster's round is not indicated. He must have thought of the ministry and may have intended to enter it. Two works on the subject which he once owned have recently come to light. One bears the title: "Theodorus—a dialogue concerning the Art of Preaching. By Mr. David Fordyce, London, 1755." On its fly-leaf is written, Nathan Hale's Book, 1768—as far as known, the earliest of his autographs. This was the year before he entered college, and possibly the book was a gift to him from his pastor, or his parents, or one of the Reverend Strongs among his connections, who wished to incline him to the pulpit in his impressionable years. The other, which he had in college, is entitled: "A Treatise on Regeneration. By Peter Van Mastricht, D.D., Professor of Divinity in the Universities of Frankfort, Duisburg, and Utrecht. Extracted from his System of Divinity called Theologia theoretica-practica," etc. Its preface states that Cotton Mather, in his directions for a candidate for the
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ministry, thought there was "no human composure equal to it." Here again on the fly-leaf is the similar autograph, Nathan Hale's Book, 1771; but if he was in the habit of poring over its contents, there is nothing to suggest it in the perfectly smooth pages and unthumbed edges of the volume./r/ It may have been a reference book which the students were expected to consult in connection with their Saturday noon divinity lectures, and which its possessor had put away for future use, perhaps in company with other early seventeenth-century authorities on the same subject. It is clear that a year later—September, 1774—Hale had not yet decided upon his future course, for at that date he was seeking his uncle's advice regarding his acceptance of a permanent position as teacher.
For the time being there were schools enough for the newly fledged graduates. In that same year—1773—Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut, in reply to inquiries from one of the Secretaries of State, London, reported that the colony taxes amounted annually to about six thousand pounds, "somewhat more than one third part" of which—a good proportion—was raised by the several towns for the support of their schools. Nathan Hale found a situation at East Haddam, on the Connecticut
/rt// 1: This edition was published at New Haven—"Printed and sold by Thomas and Samuel Green, in the Old-Council-Chamber." Hale's copy was secured by Mr. W. F. Havemeyer, of New York, from the famous George Brinley collection.
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River, sixteen miles from its mouth; his brother Enoch, one near Windsor, east of the river; Tallmadge, one at Wethersfield, where he succeeded David Humphreys, a graduate, and subsequently aide to Washington; Marvin, one at Norwich; Alden, at New Haven; Robinson, at New Windsor. The schools they taught were of three descriptions. First, the common schools supported by the towns, generally through the machinery of the ecclesiastical societies. These were the district or parish schools, which children of all ages could attend. Second, the grammar or higher schools, which a few of the larger towns were required to maintain. Third, the private schools or academies, then slowly increasing in number. One of these was opened by Daniel Humphrey at New Haven, in 1776, for the purpose of teaching writing, arithmetic and grammar. Emphasis was to be laid on the English classics, and the pupils trained "to write their mother tongue with eloquence."
The school Hale taught was probably one of the first description—a parish or district school of East Haddam, with the school-house near the ferry or "landing," as it is called to-day. Possibly it was a private school. The house has recently passed into the hands of a patriotic society and been moved to another site on the river bank. East Haddam was also known by the contracted Indian name of Moodus, which now distinguishes the flourishing village above
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it. Hale calls it "East Haddam (alias Modos)." His term here was a comparatively short one of four or five months, dating from about October, 1773, to the middle of March, 1774. Of this, his first experience, we know almost nothing. The school could have differed little from the one in which he was taught himself at Coventry, nor did the work vary greatly from what we find him doing in his next school at New London, save that he probably taught less Latin, if any at all. His pupils were of the same grades as elsewhere, from primary children to young persons of his own age, and all learning the usual English branches. Within the schoolroom it was not an uncommon arrangement to have the scholars seated on long benches fronting flat desks fastened in the walls. School-books were rarities then, Dilworth's or some other author's spelling-lessons and the Psalter being about the only ones in general use in the country districts. Blackboards and globes were almost unknown. Noah Webster tells us that before the Revolution all writing exercises and operations in arithmetic were worked out on paper. The teacher wrote the "copies" and read off the sums. Frequently the entire school studied aloud; and thus, with other primitive methods and simple exercises, the early required education was instilled. More than one of Hale's boys is doubtless pictured to the life in Trumbull's "Progress of Dulness":
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<TODO> quarter, at the rate of two hundred and twenty dollars per annum.
The Union School at New London, of which Hale now took charge—" about the middle of March," when Tracy's term closed—may have been modeled upon the older and quite famous academy at Lebanon, Connecticut, which Master Nathan Tisdale, a graduate of Harvard College, had been long and successfully conducting. The proprietors of the latter included twelve well-to-do residents of the town, with Governor Trumbull as one of their number, who wished to give their own children, and such others as might join them, the advantages of a select and superior schooling. In their agreement we read that "A Latin scholar is to be computed at 35s., old tenor, for each quarter, and a reading scholar at 30s. for each quarter—each one to pay according to the number of children that he sends, and the learning they are improved upon, whether the learned tongues, reading and history, or reading and English only." Master Tisdale's school was liberally patronized, but in one respect it would not have appealed to the modern youth. The artist Trumbull, who attended it, tells us that it offered no vacations, "in the long idleness and dissipations of which the labors of preceding months might be half forgotten."
Here was an opportunity for a young schoolmaster to set a new enterprise on its feet, and Hale succeeded. In their petition for incorporation, the proprietors of the academy state that they "have at great cost erected a school-house for the advancement of learning," and hired and paid teachers, and they were anxious to get the right man for master and retain him. Not six months had elapsed before they were offering Hale increased wages and a permanent position. The school was incorporated in October, 1774, and one of the most interesting memorials presented in these pages is the facsimile of a call issued through Hale for one of the early meetings of its proprietors, a complete list of whose names we have here for the first time. They were twenty-four in all, and represented the wealth and intelligence of New London—the Saltonstalls, Winthrops, Laws, Mumfords, Coits, Shaws, Richards, Greens, and others of influence. Their children formed the body of the school, and Hale found his time fully occupied in their instruction. We know something about it from his own pen. On September 24, 1774, he wrote to his uncle at Portsmouth: "My own employment is at present that you spent your days in. I have a school of thirty-two boys, about half Latin, the rest English. The salary allowed me is 70 per annum. 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; for which I have received 6s. a scholar by the quarter. The people with whom I live are free and generous—many of them gentlemen of sense and merit. They are desirous that I would continue and settle in the school; and propose a considerable increase in wages. I am much at a loss whether to accept their proposals. Your advice in the matter coming from an Uncle, and from a man who has spent his life in the business, would, I think, be the best I could possibly receive." To his classmate Mead he gives a few of the same facts, and to Dr. Munson, at New Haven, he wrote two months later: "I am happily situated here. I love my employment; find many friends among strangers; have time for scientific study, and seem to fill the place assigned me with satisfaction." What Hale meant by scientific study was general reading, a sort of culture course apart from theology or law, and in pursuing it he seems to have had a small library of his own to draw upon. Such works as Pope's "Iliad" and the "History of the Seven Years' War," in five volumes, were to be sent him, his brother Enoch writes, from "among the books" at his home.
Hale's occupation was clearly congenial to him, as it seems not to have been to his classmate Alden, who disliked being confined to particular hours, or have his morning reading interrupted by the discovery that it was "just fifty-nine minutes after eight o'clock." The philosophical Robinson found that teaching deprived him of the pleasure of many agreeable rides he had counted on taking about the country, and, as he writes to Hale, prevented him from enjoying "the company of yourself with some other special friends." Marvin wrote later that with him "teaching, scolding, flogging, is the continual round"; but the war had then opened and he longed to be in the field.
Of the impression Hale made as a teacher some recollections remain. One or two of his old pupils were living when Stuart wrote. The venerable Colonel Samuel Green, of Hartford, could recall his tact and amiability, his wonderful control over boys without severity of manner, and his universal popularity. Mrs. Elizabeth Poole, who lived in the same family with Hale in New London, testified in 1837 to his abilities, successful methods, fine appearance and manners, and superior mold. A letter from one of his young boys, Robert Latimer, written to Hale while he was in camp, has been preserved. "I think myself," he writes, "under the greatest obligations to you for your care and kindness to me. . . . Though I have been so happy as to be favored with your instructions, you can't, Sir, expect a finished letter from one who has as yet practiced but very little this way, especially with persons of your nice discernment;" and he adds, with the unconscious humor of his years, "I am sure, was my Mammy willing, I think I should prefer being with you to all the pleasures which the company of my relations can afford me." Mr. J. S. Babcock, who published a pamphlet on Hale in 1844, may not be too fulsome in his pen picture of the young schoolmaster where he says: "There are persons yet living, who well recollect his mild and winning mode of instruction, gaining at once the confidence and attachment of both parents and pupils; his modest yet manly deportment, his singularly frank and sincere manner, free from shadow of deception or disguise; his happy art of imparting right views and feelings to his inferiors; the power and charm of his conversation, which made him the favorite of both sexes—of the old and the young, in every domestic circle; withal, his remarkably expressive features, the very mirror of his heart, brightening up at every new emotion with a glow and an earnestness which none who had once seen him could ever forget."
Hale reengaged to remain where he was until the middle of July, 1775. His subsequent course would be determined by circumstances. He might continue with the Union Academy and succeed to Tisdale's or his own uncle's reputation as a notable New England schoolmaster; or, like Nathan Strong, Timothy Dwight and his classmate William Robinson, he might be invited to become a tutor at Yale and under its influences conclude to enter the ministry. In such case we might have known him thereafter as one of Connecticut's leading parish pastors or divines. His brother Enoch, who was greatly attached to him, entered the profession and settled at Westhampton, Massachusetts, where he maintained "an energetic and useful" charge for more than fifty-seven years. Nathan's last schoolhouse still stands. Like the one at East Haddam, it has recently been restored, removed to a new site and placed in the care of a patriotic society, to be used as a library and depository of colonial and Revolutionary relics.
At New London, Hale made many good friends. The families of the school proprietors alone would form a large and homelike circle. In Gilbert Saltonstall, a graduate of Harvard, son of Colonel Gurdon Saltonstall, part of whose correspondence is included in these pages, he seems to have found a kindred spirit. The town was a port of entry, and among its residents were ship-builders, ship-masters, importers and whalers, some of them rough and ready men, full of adventure, and not a few of whom, including four or five of the proprietors referred to, were to do good service during the Revolution as owners and captains of privateers. Here Hale met a new element whose acquaintance was to prove important to him when the war broke out, and which he must have enjoyed in itself. Scholar as he was and refined in his tastes, he loved companionship and could mingle heartily with the world as he found it. Those who were to become his subordinate officers and soldiers recognized in him, as their letters show, a sympathetic heart as responsive to their own rugged, honest natures as they were appreciative of his talents and open character. His experience in this town was valuable to him in more ways than one. It broadened his range of observation and matured capacities in which others would be called upon and were willing to confide.
With Hale's college and later days it is usual to associate a bit of romance which seems to be gathering into a chapter of courtship and engagement. To the few circumstances, however, as they were understood fifty years ago and noticed elsewhere in these pages,1 there is little to add. The handsome and affable youth no doubt made an impression in the circle of his young lady friends and was equally susceptible to their attractions. We have an intimation of his tastes in one case from a line his classmate Robinson wrote to him while he was teaching at East Haddam. "My own school," he says, "is not large; my neighbors are kind, and (summatim) my distance from a house on your side the river which contains an object worthy the esteem of every one, and, as I conclude, has yours in an especial manner, is not great." Tallmadge appears to have heard of this from Robinson, and at a later date wrote to his dear Hale charging him with being, in his own words, " head and heels in love." These intimate classmates, like the universal college chum, could not let the opportunity pass of making the most of rumor or their suspicions, and they may have been in league to draw Hale out. Whether he satisfied their curiosity, or whether there was any foundation for it at all, does not appear. It is certain that the young lady in question was not the one to whom Hale was engaged at the time of his death. The latter is best known as Alice, or Alicia, Adams, whom domestic changes introduced into his father's family while he was in college. They became betrothed apparently while he was in the service, and it is pleasant to know that she also was a person "worthy the esteem of every one." She survived as the widow of Mr. William Lawrence, of Hartford, to the ripe age of eighty-eight, and is still remembered by persons living as a sweet, benign, intellectual woman—a character that is stamped in the lines of her portrait which has recently been added to the Athensum collection in that city.
THE LEXINGTON ALARM—HALE JOINS THE ARMY. While Hale was teaching school the war opened. The nineteenth of April, 1775, had the effect of a surprise. The phase of affairs had been regarded as critical, men felt that a struggle was upon them, but the actual hostilities, the firing of the first gun, stirred them all with a new and profound sensation. It was so in our Civil War. While the conflict with the mother-country had been openly predicted and anticipated, the sudden mustering of the farmers, the volleys along the roads and from behind the walls, the slaughter of the red-coats, the fall of neighbors and the grief of families intensified their mingled forebodings and enthusiasm. Nothing had come so near to these people since the days when King Philip or the Pequots had threatened the homes of their grandfathers. The pitch of their emotion and patriotism is represented by this outburst in a letter of the day: "Oh my dear New England, hearest thou the alarm of war—the call of Heaven is to arms, to arms!" Connecticut as a near neighbor turned out to the assistance of Massachusetts and in a few days had four thousand men on the roads marching towards Boston. They dropped into their militia organizations or, forming impromptu companies, pushed on, in many cases without waiting for orders. In its records of the Revolutionary War, published by the State, the names of these volunteers, with the days of their service, are classified by localities and together present the appearance of an honor-roll of the emergency. In the Coventry list may be seen the names of John and Joseph Hale, two of Nathan's brothers.
The young schoolmaster watched the tendencies of the times with eager interest. In the second letter that we have from his pen, dated September 8, 1774, he writes that no liberty-pole had yet been erected in New London, "but the people seem much more spirited than they were before the alarm." This was an alarm caused within a few days by the report that the British ships were firing upon Boston and troops preparing to march upon the towns. Several thousand armed men in Massachusetts and Connecticut immediately headed for the threatened points. The reports proved false, but the colonists realized through this demonstration that the right spirit would prevail when reports proved true. Hale adds: "Parson Peters, of Hebron, I hear, has had a second visit paid him by the Sons of liberty in Windham. His treatment and the concessions he made I have not yet heard." Hebron adjoined Coventry and the parson was the Rev. Samuel Peters, one of the few clergymen in the colony who threw their influence against the rising sentiment of the country. Finding the liberty men too much in earnest to give them occasion for a third visit, he quickly left for England.
From this date the movement grew rapidly. In October the lately assembled first Continental Congress took decisive action in favor of commercial non-intercourse with Great Britain as long as the tax measures were in force. Its stand was applauded and toasted by the patriotic element. A wider interchange of views and freer expression of them followed. New London was one of the few Connecticut towns that could boast the luxury of a newspaper, and its weekly Gazette, like the others elsewhere, served as a pulse of opinion through the items it circulated. If Hale read it carefully, as no doubt he did, he saw that his friends and neighbors in Coventry held a legal town meeting on September 13,—Phineas Strong, moderator,—at which they expressed alarm at the gloomy aspect, but at the same time gratefully acknowledged "the favorable omens of Providence in that happy unity, propitious plenty, sympathetic charity, noble fortitude and manly resistance to despotism, universal throughout America." He saw that at the recent Commencement at his college there was an English dialogue presented on "The Right of America, and the unconstitutional measures of the British Parliament." Now and then there came some bugle blast which strengthened the nerves, as when "Cassius" wrote to the printer on February 24, 1775:
"The question which for the last ten years has been agitated between Great Britain and the American Colonies is now shifted from the principle of right to that of power. . . . To this crisis, O Americans, our affairs are wrought up that the alternative, the serious alternative, is this—either submit and take the yoke upon you or prepare, and that instantly, to resist in the same style in which you have hitherto professed to reason and to act. Long and labored speeches and harangues, when the enemy are in sight, carry with them strong implication of cowardice. . . . Therefore, as it has been for some time sounded as our alarm-bell that we must unite or die—our motto being 'United we stand, divided we fall'—so in one word let this be added, Resist and be free or submit and be slaves. Need men be urged to arm when the enemy is at the door?"
Immediately beneath this appears the report of a meeting in Fairfax County, Virginia, in favor of organization of companies and drilling for service, with the heading, "Colonel George Washington in the Chair." A month later the Gazette did not fail to publish Warren's oration on the anniversary of the Boston massacre, with its many impassioned sentences, and also one of Chatham's friendly speeches. Independence was at that date something of a prohibited sentiment so far as its public expression was concerned, but in private it was avowed, if not urged, in certain quarters; and when the New London paper found a pointed reference to it in the Boston Post, it seems to have been happy to quote it without assuming the responsibility of its appearance. In effect the writer said that if England continued to spurn her colonies, the latter would be compelled by the great law of nature to rise in their might and, following the example of the united provinces of Holland, publish a manifesto to the world, showing the necessity of dissolving their connection with a nation whose ministers were aiming at their ruin. With this they must offer free trade to all and an asylum to the oppressed throughout the world. "This is the dernier resort," continued the writer, "and this, Americans, you can do, and this you must do, unless tyranny ceases to invade your liberties." Samuel Adams thought so too, and he had more than one disciple throughout the colonies. From what we know of Hale he could heartily have said "Amen" to the sentiment. There was also a poets' corner in the Gazette in which the local muse was permitted at intervals to fan the flame. "Rule Britannia" was once as popular in America as in England, but now an American version was attempted:
"To spread bright freedom's gentle sway, Your isle too narrow for its bound, We traced wild ocean's trackless way And here a safe asylum found. Rule Britannia, rule the waves. But rule us justly—not like slaves. "Let us your sons by freedom warm'd, Your own example keep in view, 'Gainst Tyranny be ever arm'd, Tho' we our Tyrant find—in you. Rule Britannia, rule the waves, But never make your children slaves."
To Hale such atmosphere must have proved a tonic, and we are the better prepared to accept the traditions which represent him as making a spirited speech at a public meeting held in New London on the reception of the news from Lexington. "Let us march immediately," he is reported to have said, "and never lay down our arms until we obtain our independence." The last word was cautiously in the air, but he may have boldly spoken it as the true issue of the war. This was obvious to every one who had watched events and understood the temper of the home administration. There was no half-way outcome. War meant complete independence for the colonies, or, in case of defeat, a more irritating dependence on Great Britain.
Whatever Hale may have said at the meeting, it is hardly probable, as usually represented, that he bade farewell to his school on the following morning and marched with Captain Coit's company for Boston. Parts of four companies went from New London. His name does not appear on the official list of any of them, and from the tenor of his letter to the proprietors of the school, July 7th following, we gather that he had not been absent from it in April. He was under engagement for a year, and just before its expiration he requested as a special favor that they would release him two weeks in advance. Nothing, he says, could have persuaded him to ask for it but the fact that he had received a commission in the army and that closing a fortnight earlier would probably not subject them to inconvenience. Had he marched on the alarm and been away as long as Coit's company, the school would have been broken up for the term. He was well aware that if the war had then opened in earnest, the systematic mustering of troops would be necessary and that he could enter for permanent service in ample time a few weeks later.
Connecticut made her first regular call for volunteers soon after the uprising of the 19th and organized six regiments, one from each county, to serve for seven months. As these troops were dispatched into fields outside of the State, some to participate in the siege of Boston, others to invade Canada, the Assembly at an extra session in July organized two more regiments for the special defense of the colony, to be known as the "Seventh" and "Eighth" and to serve until about the 1st of December. Long terms of service, winter quarters—anything suggestive of a regular army—would have been intolerable to the colonists at that date, and in consequence the country during the first two years suffered from lack of discipline and cohesion in its defensive force. It was not until 1777 that a Continental army was enlisted to serve for "three years or during the war." On the other hand, the short terms of the earlier years were filled with a promptness that gave to the cause the needed momentum and appearance of energy.
On the 1st of July the Connecticut Assembly appointed, and on the 6th the Governor commissioned, the officers of the new "Seventh" regiment. Hale's name was on the list. He appeared as first lieutenant of the third, or major's, company. The appointment doubtless came about in the usual way. The Assembly, through committees, made out the list from applications and recommendations received from the delegates or leading men of the towns. Expressing his wish to enter the service, Hale could receive ample endorsement from friends in New London. It is quite possible that the major, Jonathan Latimer, who came from that place and whose son Robert was one of Hale's pupils, applied to have him appointed his lieutenant. The first lieutenants of the three field officers' companies were practically captains, as they had full charge of the men. The regiment was commanded by Colonel Charles Webb, of Stamford, and being intended for coast defense, it was recruited mainly from Greenwich, Stamford, Norwalk, Milford, New Haven, Branford, Saybrook, Lyme, New London, Groton, and Stonington on the Sound. It contained, as Hale himself says, many skippers and sailors. The lieutenant-colonel's first lieutenant was William Hull, of Derby, one of Hale's college acquaintances whose friendship was to be strengthened in their camp associations.
As he left his school to begin recruiting, Hale wrote to the proprietors his appreciative letter of July 7th. "Good reasons," he assures them, take him into the army. "School keeping," he adds, "is a business of which I was always fond, but since my residence in this town, everything has conspired to render it more agreeable. I have thought much of never quitting it but with life, but at present there seems an opportunity of more extended public service. The kindness expressed to me by the people of the place, but especially the proprietors of the school, will always be very gratefully remembered." So the school bell gave way to the drum, and with commission, blanks and necessary funds in hand, Hale proceeded to fill up his company. It may have been at this" interval, when he had occasion to ride around the country that he called on old friends in New Haven. It was at Dr. Munson's, as we are told, that, while speaking of the new field he was about to enter, he exclaimed with a youth's enthusiasm, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!"
Hale appears to have recruited men in and around New London, while his lieutenant and ensign, Belcher and Hilliard, went to work at Stonington. In this connection we have a brief but rare letter preserved, in which Belcher writes to Hale that by the 27th of July he had enrolled twenty-two men, whom he expected to increase to thirty, and inquires "what progress you have made in the enlisting way." The companies were all soon filled and took post at different points. Several were stationed at New Haven under the colonel, while the major and three companies went on with the fortifications at New London. The daily routine was drill, guard and picket duty along the shore. Once, in August, the enemy's ships fired into Stonington and the major and his men—Hale with them, no doubt—hurried over to defend the place. The alarm subsided and they were soon ordered to another field. Washington had not been in command of the gathering provincial army around Boston more than a month before he called for reinforcements. On September 8th, he made a demand on Governor Trumbull for the two new Connecticut regiments and about the 20th the companies were on the march.
It is here that the preserved portions of Hale's army diary begin. Brief, abbreviated, hurriedly written and intended, probably, only for personal reference, it is still a valuable record—the only existing record, indeed, which gives the movements of his regiment. For biographical purposes its value lies in the lively interest it shows him to have taken in his new duties as an officer and in the progress of the war. From it we learn that from New London his part of the regiment marched to Providence and beyond through the Massachusetts towns of Rehoboth, Attleborough, Wrentham, Walpole, Dedham and Roxbury to Cambridge, headquarters of the American force besieging the British in Boston. On arrival the Seventh was assigned to General Sullivan's brigade at Winter Hill, on the extreme left of the semicircular line of investment, not far from Medford. The other Connecticut regiments were stationed on the right, at Roxbury. Five months had now passed since Lexington and Concord, and three since the battle of Bunker Hill. These opening successes had greatly elated the country and seemed to foreshadow the final result. The gathering, around Boston, of the farmers and citizens in their own clothes, and many of them with their own arms, indicated the character and extent of the first uprising. It was a new ex- perience—not yet, and never to become, a camp of soldiers so much as an extended muster of the townsmen. These people were still appealing, in 1775, to their king to protect them against the legislation of their Parliament, and they raised no common flag of disloyalty. They floated their provincial or special regimental colors. Our schoolmaster of the Seventh Connecticut marched under a blue banner. Next year, with their protests and attitude unheeded, they will run the white stripes of colonial integrity through the broad red field of the British standard, and at a later date replace the Union Jack with a cluster of stars.
Here at Winter Hill, two miles on the direct road from the British at Charlestown Neck and Bunker Hill, Hale passed his first four months with Washington's army. Apart from the gratification of being in his country's service, he found camp life more or less agreeable. He seems at one time or another to have visited nearly every part of the American lines, examined the forts and familiarized himself with the country about. The doings of the enemy, who at points were in plain sight, would of course be noted. "Considerable firing upon Roxbury side in the forenoon, and some P. M. No damage done as we hear "—is his first entry the morning after arrival in quarters. Some days later he rides several miles around to the right or Dorchester end of the line to have a look at British Boston from that side. Now and again he commands the picket-guard on Ploughed Hill, in advance of Winter Hill, and hears the regulars at work with their pickaxes. "One of our centuries," he writes, "heard their grand rounds give the countersign which was Hamilton.—Returned to camp at sunrise." November 9th there was a general alarm sounded on the landing, at Lechmere's Point, of a body of red-coats who were out on a cattle raid. "Our works were immediately all manned," is Hale's account, "and a detachment sent to receive them, who were obliged to wade through water nearly waist high. While the enemy were landing, we gave them a constant cannonade from Prospect Hill. Our party, having got on to the Point, marched in two columns, one on each side of ye hill, with a view to surround ye enemy, but upon the first appearance of them, they made their boats as fast as possible." Opposite, on Bunker Hill, a young English officer, Captain Evelyn, was sending home similar bits of news. "Remember poor me," he wrote to his father in October, " three thousand miles off, lodging upon the cold ground, and now and then ducking at the whistling of a twenty-four pounder, one of which came a few days ago into our camp, went through one of our tents and fairly took the crown out of one of the King's Own Grenadiers' hats. His head was not in it." Not long after Hale had something of the same sort to note: "Went to Cobble Hill. A shell and a shot from Bunker Hill. The shell breaking in the air, one piece fell and touched a man's hat, but did no harm." This was mild warfare, but all new to young soldiers in 1775.
The siege of Boston presented no thrilling or desperate episodes. On the part of the Americans it was mainly a blockade of the roads running out of the town, with an attempt to crowd the enemy at given points. The lack of powder prevented a continued and concentrated bombardment of Boston, while the British believed their own force to be insufficient to break up the siege and seemed to dread the repetition of such stone-wall fighting as the minute-men of April 19th had indulged in. As the winter drew on, both armies kept more closely to their lines and contented themselves with irregular cannonading. From the nature of the position, attack and sortie were seldom attempted. In the meantime Captain Hale was perfecting himself in a soldier's and officer's duties. He drilled his company, looked after clothes, provisions, pay and equipments and mastered the minute directions for guards and pickets. Resolution and activity marked his daily routine. "Studied the method of forming a regiment for a review, of arraying 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." And again: "Complaint of the bad condition of the lower picquet by Major Cutler. 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. The present irregular state of the army is owing to a capital neglect in both of these." His leisure hours, too, were often pleasantly spent. With the freedom and familiarity permitted in the provincial forces, where in many cases men and officers had been friends and neighbors at home, we find him dining twice at General Putnam's, visiting Generals Lee, Greene, Spencer and Sullivan and sharing in entertainments. On these occasions Hull was frequently his companion. They were both promoted to be captains, or more properly captains lieutenant, during this fall—Hale on September 1st—but were not allowed a full captain's pay until the reorganization to be noticed. At times Hale joined in camp diversions, played football and checkers, watched wrestling matches—evening prayers, he tells us, being omitted on the occasion when Winter Hill was "stumped" by Prospect Hill—read what books he could pick up, went to hear the several chaplains preach, drank a bottle of wine at Brown's, cider at Stone's, wrote letters to father, brothers, friends and pupils, and—what is significant of his faith and temperament—throughout his diary never entered a despondent line or reflection. It is true that in his polite note of October 19th to Betsey Christopher's at New London, he implies that camp scenes had lost their first fascination for him. As we would expect, however, he tells her: "Not that I am discontented—so far from it, that in the present situation of things I would not accept a furlough were it offered me."
In his Connecticut circles Hale was not forgotten. Among his New London acquaintances, Gilbert Saltonstall, already referred to, kept him informed of all matters of interest, and to Hale's care in preserving his letters we are indebted for additions of some value to local history. Hearing from the captain that he was at Winter Hill, Saltonstall replied: "I see you are stationed in the mouth of danger. I look upon your situation as more perilous than any other in camp." In reply to something Hale must have written him about entering the service, he says: "I wholly agree with you in ye agreeables of a camp life and should have tried it in some capacity or other before now, could my father carry on his business without me. I proposed going with Dudley [his brother] who is appointed to command a twenty-Gun ship in the Continental Navy, but my father is not willing, and I can't persuade myself to leave him in the eve of life against his consent." An opportunity offered later. In a postscript he adds: "The young girls, B. Coit, S. and P. Belden [Hale's pupils] have frequently desired their Compliments to Master, but I've never thought of mentioning it till now. You must write something in your next by way of P. S. that I may shew it them." He sends Hale the war news from different points, addresses him as " Esteemed Friend" and hopes he will continue writing him from camp. His letters in the Appendix only add to the regret that Hale's answers, and his replies to others, have not been preserved. John Hallam wrote October 9th: "I received your two letters by Capt. Packwood and the post—am extremely glad you bore travelling & arrived at the camp so well. . . . Mrs. Hallam, Betsey & the rest of the family's compliments to you." Young Thomas W. Fosdick applied for a position in the army, "under you in particular"—a wish that was to be gratified in the following year. Among his classmates Elihu Marvin, at Norwich, took Hale to task for not remembering him: "Three months at Cambridge and not one line—Well, I can't help it; if a Captain's commission has all this effect, what will happen when it is turned into a Colonel's. . . . Polly hears of one and another at New London who have letters from Mr. Hale, but none comes to me, Polly says." Roger Alden, at New Haven, also thought he was neglected, but explained with a sententious touch: "The cares, perplexities and fatigues of your office are matters sufficient to vindicate your conduct, and the duty which you owe your honor and the interest of your country is sufficient to employ your whole time and to justify you in dispensing with the obligations of your old friends and acquaintances." In a livelier and more interested vein he continued: "I almost envy you your circumstances—I want to be in the army very much; I feel myself fit to relish the noise of guns, trumpets, blunderbuss and thunder, and was I qualified for a berth and of influence sufficient to procure one, I would accept it with all my heart. . . . After you have thought over all this tell yourself that no one loves you more than Roger Alden."
With the approach of winter the enlistment of a new army engrossed the attention of Congress and camp. The terms of most of the troops would expire in December, and the danger was foreseen that during that and the following month the investment might be seriously weakened. Washington's anxiety in the case is expressed in his letters of that date. To meet the emergency it was determined to recruit new regiments, as far as possible from the old ones in camp, to serve through the year 1776. This was known as the new establishment, and Connecticut's quota was to be five battalions. Colonel Webb and all his captains, including Hale, reentered the service, first for the emergency until January 1st, and then for the following year. The nucleus of their regiment thus remained, and they proceeded to fill up its companies. In the new army for 1776 it was designated as the " Nineteenth Foot in the service of the United Colonies," otherwise in the army of the English colonies on the continent of North America, and hence the "Continental" army.
Hale refers to this reorganization, and we find him cooperating heart and soul in the work. To tide over December, the men were urged by officers of all grades, including Generals Lee and Sullivan, to remain a few weeks longer, and the militia were called out to fill the gaps. In a single sentence in Hale's diary we may read how earnestly he put the case before his own company: "Promised the men if they would tarry another month they should have my wages for that time"—an offer that might spontaneously come from one who was ready to give his life at a more serious turn of affairs. Many soldiers volunteered to remain, and the siege was maintained. One army was disappearing and another organizing in the face and with the knowledge of the enemy. Hale's term in the old Seventh expired December 6th, and on the 10th he was mustered out; but under the new arrangement he continued his duties without interruption. He reenlisted men for his new company who were given furloughs for a few weeks, while his lieutenant and ensign went back to Connecticut to recruit more. It took time to accomplish the business in the winter season, and it was well into January before the second army took shape. From New London John Hallam wrote to Hale, December 10th, that in view of the many demands for men, recruiting for his command went on slowly. Captain Dudley Saltonstall was beating up seamen for his Continental frigate, and a dozen craft were fitting out in port which needed sailors. It will be noticed that Hale commiserates Betsey Christopher's on the social outlook for the winter, there would be so few gentlemen in town.
During these army changes Washington permitted officers and men to visit their homes, and Hale took his turn with the rest. On the 23d of December he left camp for a month's leave, reaching his father's house at Coventry on the 26th. Of this visit we know little, as a break occurs in his diary from the 29th until his return to Winter Hill, and we will leave him at the firesides of those he loved and whom he was never again to see. It is known that he spent part of the time at New London looking after enlistments. Here he missed his ensign, George Hurlbut, who had returned to camp and who wrote him on the 28th: "I joined our Company last Sunday and found them all in good spirits. I was very much disappointed in not seeing you here. I am how a going to set out for Bunker Hill [on picket]. I shan't go with so much pleasure as if you was to be with me." On January 4th he is in happier mood: "I hope the next time I see you it will be in Boston a drinking a glass of wine with me. If we can but have a bridge we shall make a push to try our brave courage." On January 27th Hale was back again in camp with recruits to find that his regiment was one of the largest among the twenty-six which formed the new force, and that in the reorganization it was brigaded with three other Connecticut regiments under General Spencer and transferred to the right wing at Roxbury. His new commission as a full Continental captain, dated January 1, 1776, and signed by John Hancock, is still preserved.
Presently the military situation changed. Finding themselves locked in at Boston, unable to utilize either their army or their navy effectively, the British determined to abandon the contracted base for a wider field. They proposed to make New York the center of operations in 1776, and with powerful reinforcements control the line of the Hudson and thus isolate New England, with its large population and resources, from the other colonies. From that vantage-point the rebellion was to be quelled north and south. Washington and his officers fathomed the enemy's intentions, and in January General Lee was dispatched to New York City to forestall Lord Howe and put the place in a state of defense. On March 17, 1776, came the first step postscript he adds: "The young girls, B. Coit, S. and P. Belden [Hale's pupils] have frequently desired their Compliments to Master, but I've never thought of mentioning it till now. You must write something in your next by way of P. S. that I may shew it them." He sends Hale the war news from different points, addresses him as " Esteemed Friend" and hopes he will continue writing him from camp. His letters in the Appendix only add to the regret that Hale's answers, and his replies to others, have not been preserved. John Hallam wrote October 9th: "I received your two letters by Capt. Packwood and the post—am extremely glad you bore travelling & arrived at the camp so well. . . . Mrs. Hallam, Betsey & the rest of the family's compliments to you." Young Thomas W. Fosdick applied for a position in the army, "under you in particular"—a wish that was to be gratified in the following year. Among his classmates Elihu Marvin, at Norwich, took Hale to task for not remembering him: "Three months at Cambridge and not one line—Well, I can't help it; if a Captain's commission has all this effect, what will happen when it is turned into a Colonel's. . . . Polly hears of one and another at New London who have letters from Mr. Hale, but none comes to me, Polly says." Roger Alden, at New Haven, also thought he was neglected, but explained with a sententious touch: "The cares, perplexities and fatigues of your office are matters sufficient to vindicate your conduct, and the duty which you owe your honor and the interest of your country is sufficient to employ your whole time and to justify you in dispensing with the obligations of your old friends and acquaintances." In a livelier and more interested vein he continued: "I almost envy you your circumstances—I want to be in the army very much; I feel myself fit to relish the noise of guns, trumpets, blunderbuss and thunder, and was I qualified for a berth and of influence sufficient to procure one, I would accept it with all my heart. . . . After you have thought over all this tell yourself that no one loves you more than Roger Alden."
With the approach of winter the enlistment of a new army engrossed the attention of Congress and camp. The terms of most of the troops would expire in December, and the danger was foreseen that during that and the following month the investment might be seriously weakened. Washington's anxiety in the case is expressed in his letters of that date. To meet the emergency it was determined to recruit new regiments, as far as possible from the old ones in camp, to serve through the year 1776. This was known as the new establishment, and Connecticut's quota was to be five battalions. Colonel Webb and all his captains, including Hale, reentered the service, first for the emergency until January 1st, and then for the following year. The nucleus of their regiment thus remained, and they proceeded to fill up its companies. In the new army for 1776 it was designated as the " Nineteenth Foot in the service of the United Colonies," otherwise in the army of the English colonies on the continent of North America, and hence the "Continental" army.
Hale refers to this reorganization, and we find him cooperating heart and soul in the work. To tide over December, the men were urged by officers of all grades, including Generals Lee and Sullivan, to remain a few weeks longer, and the militia were called out to fill the gaps. In a single sentence in Hale's diary we may read how earnestly he put the case before his own company: "Promised the men if they would tarry another month they should have my wages for that time"—an offer that might spontaneously come from one who was ready to give his life at a more serious turn of affairs. Many soldiers volunteered to remain, and the siege was maintained. One army was disappearing and another organizing in the face and with the knowledge of the enemy. Hale's term in the old Seventh expired December 6th, and on the 10th he was mustered out; but under the new arrangement he continued his duties without interruption. He reenlisted men for his new company who were given furloughs for a few weeks, while his lieutenant and ensign went back to Connecticut to recruit more. It took time to accomplish the business in the winter season, and it was well into January before the second army took shape. From New London John Hallam wrote to Hale, December 10th, that in view of the many demands for men, recruiting for his command went on slowly. Captain Dudley Saltonstall was beating up seamen for his Continental frigate, and a dozen craft were fitting out in port which needed sailors. It will be noticed that Hale commiserates Betsey Christopher's on the social outlook for the winter, there would be so few gentlemen in town.
During these army changes Washington permitted officers and men to visit their homes, and Hale took his turn with the rest. On the 23d of December he left camp for a month's leave, reaching his father's house at Coventry on the 26th. Of this visit we know little, as a break occurs in his diary from the 29th until his return to Winter Hill, and we will leave him at the firesides of those he loved and whom he was never again to see. It is known that he spent part of the time at New London looking after enlistments. Here he missed his ensign, George Hurlbut, who had returned to camp and who wrote him on the 28th: "I joined our Company last Sunday and found them all in good spirits. I was very much disappointed in not seeing you here. I am how a going to set out for Bunker Hill [on picket]. I shan't go with so much pleasure as if you was to be with me." On January 4th he is in happier mood: "I hope the next time I see you it will be in Boston a drinking a glass of wine with me. If we can but have a bridge we shall make a push to try our brave courage." On January 27th Hale was back again in camp with recruits to find that his regiment was one of the largest among the twenty-six which formed the new force, and that in the reorganization it was brigaded with three other Connecticut regiments under General Spencer and transferred to the right wing at Roxbury. His new commission as a full Continental captain, dated January 1, 1776, and signed by John Hancock, is still preserved.
Presently the military situation changed. Finding themselves locked in at Boston, unable to utilize either their army or their navy effectively, the British determined to abandon the contracted base for a wider field. They proposed to make New York the center of operations in 1776, and with powerful reinforcements control the line of the Hudson and thus isolate New England, with its large population and resources, from the other colonies. From that vantage-point the rebellion was to be quelled north and south. Washington and his officers fathomed the enemy's intentions, and in January General Lee was dispatched to New York City to forestall Lord Howe and put the place in a state of defense. On March 17, 1776, came the first step.
WITH THE ARMY AT NEW YORK—DEFEAT ON LONG ISLAND. The Boston army marched to New York by brigades following each other at brief intervals. The first to start was a specially organized command under General Heath and included Hale's regiment, Webb's "Nineteenth." Webb's marching orders, signed by Horatio Gates, then Washington's adjutant-general, have been preserved. Leaving Roxbury March 18th with five days' cooked rations, the troops were to proceed by way of Mann's to Providence and thence by way of Green's and Burnham's—well-known inns—to Norwich, a distance of ninety-three miles, which Heath reports, the condition of the roads considered, they covered "with great expedition." On the 26th the troops were at New London and Hale found himself for the third time among the friends of his school-teaching days and in the community from which he had volunteered for the field. But there was little time for greeting or reminiscence, as the local Gazette states that on the following day they all "embarked in high spirits on board 15 transports and sailed for New York." Leisurely floating up the Sound, they reached the East River in the forenoon of the 30th and, as Heath again tells us, disembarked at Turtle Bay, a convenient landing-place at the foot of present Forty-Fifth Street, a little south of Blackwell's Island.
As Hale stepped lightly ashore with his company and casually took in the surroundings, he saw near by an old powder-house and beyond it perhaps the remains of a former garrison camp, while just above stood attractively James Beekman's handsome mansion and cultivated grounds. Little did he dream that the shifting events of the next five months and a half would force this scene upon his view again with a sudden and pitiless reality! From that mansion he was to receive his death sentence, and not far from where he was then standing, with enemies instead of friends about him, he was to meet his tragic fate.
From Turtle Bay the troops marched into New York City and quartered in barracks and vacant houses. In the course of two weeks the other brigades arrived. Washington, not trusting to transports, rode down the shore road from New London and reached the city April 13th. From this time until the battle of Long Island in August the business in hand for the American forces was to fortify their new position. The military problem presented more complications than at Boston. There the object had been to drive the enemy out of a city; here the effort must be made to prevent them from occupying one. As New York was open to a combined attack at more than one point by the British fleet and land forces, the difficulties of the defense were greatly increased. To protect the city from direct bombardment it became necessary to throw one wing of the American army over to the Long Island or Brooklyn side of the East River and by its partial isolation weaken the entire line. This was the defect in Washington's new position, but it was felt and wisely held both in Congress and the army that the moral effect of the voluntary abandonment of so important a center would work more seriously than defeat in attempting to hold it. The enemy were to be met at the coast where they landed and every inch of soil disputed with them. This was the key-note of the campaign of 1776. In following Hale's experiences in this new field, we miss the two sources of information and personal incident available for 1775. As far as known, not more than four entries of his diary for 1776 have been preserved, and most of his correspondence has disappeared. Of his own letters for this year, three exist. In various other records, however, his regiment is referred to. On April 2d, three days after its arrival, General Heath reviewed his brigade "on the green near the Liberty pole." The men, we are told, "made a martial appearance, being well armed, and went through their exercise much to the satisfaction of a great concourse of the inhabitants of the city." The green was the present City Hall Park, then much larger in area and generally called "the fields," while the liberty-pole, which in earlier years Sons of Liberty set up as often as British soldiers cut it down, stood close to the spot where Hale's statue now stands. In the review he must have marched over the site. As summer approached and troops kept coming in, they were encamped in tents outside of the city and on the Long Island front. Heath's brigade, which passed successively under Generals Stirling's and Sullivan's command and later under General McDougall's, was stationed early in May at about the center of the defenses thrown up across the island along the line of Grand Street. It extended across the Bowery at that point, with Webb's regiment apparently on the west side of the road. Of the three redouts it was to man, one was on a high hill known as Bayard's Mount, but which the British during their occupation called Bunker Hill. It was in its vicinity that Hale would have been found during the greater part of this campaign. On July 9th—quoting once more from Heath's valuable memoirs—" At evening roll-call the declaration of the Congress, declaring the United Colonies Free.
SOVEREIGN, AND INDEPENDENT STATES Was published at the head of the respective brigades in camp, and received with loud huzzas." The inevitable issue was joined at last, a new nation was proclaimed, and no one, we venture to say, gave a more responsive cheer than our young captain, who felt for the first time that whatever sacrifice he might be called upon to make, it could now be made in the name of all that the colonies ought to fight for. For a short time, in April or May, Hale's regiment was stationed on Long Island where there were works to build and Tories to watch. Many of the latter were arrested and removed under guard to other parts. Hale entertained a true Whig's opinion of them. "It would grieve every good man," he writes to his brother Enoch, May 30th, "to consider what unnatural monsters we have as it were in our bowels. Numbers in this Colony, and likewise in the western part of Connecticut, would be glad to imbrue their hands in their country's blood." With more satisfaction he touches on other points, June 3d: "It gives pleasure to every friend of his country to observe the health which prevails in our army. . . . The army is every day improving in discipline, and it is hoped will soon be able to meet the enemy at any kind of play. My company, which at first was small, is now increased to eighty, and there is a sergeant recruiting, who, I hope, has got the other ten which completes the Company. We are hardly able to judge as to the numbers the British army for the summer is to consist of—undoubtedly sufficient to cause too much bloodshed." These are brief sentences, but they continue to reflect Hale's unwavering tone. He is observing, stout-hearted, confident, ready to meet the enemy "at any kind of play."
Enoch Hale's replies to his "brother Captain," as he called him, are not at hand. That he wrote to him several times at this period appears from his own brief diary. Having entered the ministry, Enoch was now beginning to preach, filling pulpits temporarily at different places. As a member of a patriotic family he was interested in all that was going on and added his encouragement to the cause. "Go to training, pray with the soldiers," is one of his entries. "Preach to the soldiers before they march" is another. On June 19th he notes that his brother John "has received a letter from Nathan, dated 17th at New York; has sent one for me by the way of Norwich—not received yet." From July 23d to the 26th he was in New Haven attending Commencement. He called on the President, saw Mr. Dwight, dined with classmate Hillhouse, lodged with classmate Robinson, took tea at "Rev. Edwards" and "Rev. Whittlesey's" and obtained the degree of Master of Arts for himself and the captain. "Write to brother to tell him I have got him his degree." Many questions, of course, these good college friends had to ask about Nathan and how he fared in the army, and probably they heard nothing more of him until the distressing news came in two months later.
To the disappointment of the spirited young officers in the American army, no more opportunities for distinguishing themselves in minor affairs offered here at New York than at the siege of Boston. Active campaigning did not open until the end of the summer. Preliminary skirmishes, dashes at picket posts, bold reconnoitering and surprises were out of the question before the battle of Long Island. Hale, it will appear, seems to have missed the chances of this kind which warfare usually presents. How much credit, accordingly, is to be given to accounts which make him the leader in a clever exploit early in the season, it is difficult to say. It is stated that he performed the feat of cutting out a sloop loaded with supplies from under the guns of the British man-of-war Asia, then lying in the East River, and distributing the clothes and provisions to needy soldiers of the army. That he was capable of such a capture will be taken for granted, but most probably the incident has come down in an exaggerated form or has been confused with some other affair.1 Many of Hale's company being sailors, they were detailed from time to time to man whale-boats patrolling the harbor and surrounding shores and a few with one or two officers are reported as being in the privateering service. Beyond this the regiment was on almost constant duty with the other troops on the lines around the city or on Governor's Island.
Presently, on June 28th, the enemy arrived. In a few weeks they numbered twenty-five thousand, with a powerful fleet to cooperate. Their camps were scattered over Staten Island. Washington's force was somewhat larger, but, with its many militiamen, far less effective. The expectation and suspense in the American camp were aggravated by Lord Howe's leisurely delay in preparing to advance. It was not until August 2 2d that he moved. The last note we have from Hale was dated two days before. To his brother he wrote: "I have only time for a hasty letter. Our situation has been such this fortnight or more as scarce to admit of writing. . . . For about six or eight days the enemy have been expected hourly whenever the wind and tide in the least favored. We keep a particular look out for them this morning. The place and manner of attack time must determine. The event we leave to Heaven."
The first collision with the enemy—the battle of Long Island—occurred on August 27th. Lord Howe, at Staten Island, had been studying the American position for several weeks and rightly concluded that its vulnerable point lay in the detached left wing on the Brooklyn side. A successful attack there would result in the capture of some thousands of Washington's men, or, if unsuccessful, the British could march on to the vicinity of Hell Gate, and by threatening the American flank and rear at Harlem or beyond, compel the surrender of New York. Accordingly, with the bulk of his army, twenty-two thousand or more effectives, Howe crossed the Narrows to Gravesend beach and prepared to push three columns against the Brooklyn outposts and fortified lines. The latter ran through the heart of the present city. One column moved toward the site of Greenwood Cemetery, another to Flatbush and the lower edge of Prospect Park, while the third and strongest, under Howe in person, was held in position further east. As soon as Washington was assured that this was no feint, but a determined advance, he hurried troops across to the exposed flank and engaged the enemy in skirmishes on the roads. On the night of the 26th Howe marched his third column far out to his right, encircled the American pickets, captured the patrol of five officers looking out for him, and early on the' following morning reached a point between the American works and the three thousand American troops at the outposts on the grounds of the cemetery and the park. Finding themselves outflanked and almost surrounded, these troops made a dash to the rear to regain their works, and in the running fight that followed and in the stand made here and there by separate parties in the woods and fields we have the battle of Long Island. Washington lost about eleven hundred men that morning, two thirds of them prisoners, and on the night of the 29th, the position proving untenable, he made his famous retreat back to New York. The skill with which this was effected and the chagrin of the enemy at the loss of their opportunity compensated partially, in moral effect, for the disaster of the 27th.
Hale's regiment did not participate in this battle. McDougall's brigade, to which it then belonged, was one of the commands which had been sent over one or two days before, but it was retained within the works to repel an expected assault by the enemy after their success in the open. Hale and his comrades, however, must have been able to witness much of the fighting, and on the night of the retreat, with the sailors in the companies to distribute among the boats, they probably had their hands full. We should look for some description of these exciting events in the captain's diary, but here that already broken record stops short. The closing entry, dated August 23 d, mentions the skirmishing on Long Island, and, so far as known, this is the last item we have under his own hand.
Hale was now twenty-one years old, and commanding a company seventy or eighty strong. It has been observed by writers that the Revolution was fought out largely by young men, which is substantially true of all long wars. Our schoolmaster captain was hardly a veteran as yet, but fourteen months with the army had made him something of a seasoned soldier who understood his duties and impressed his superiors. His own company he doubtless held well in hand by firm and kind methods and the force of his own example. Such a spirit would wish for men who could be depended upon in action, and we know that already there was some fighting material developing in his little command. His brave boy-sergeant, Fosdick, mentioned in Hale's last letter, could dare to run a fire-raft against a British man-of-war, and presently he will be fighting in Knowlton's Rangers. His ensign, George Hurlbut, subsequently promoted a cavalry captain, was to be mortally wounded in saving a store-ship in the Hudson, not far above the scene of Fosdick's exploit. Washington's orders mention him and his comrades on the occasion as "entitled to the most distinguished notice and applause from their general." His faithful sergeant, Stephen Hempstead, to be referred to again, barely survived the terrible wounds he received at the defense of Fort Ledyard and in the massacre of its garrison. What these fine fellows thought of their captain is a matter of record. All three were happy in serving under him. Hale's new first lieutenant, Charles Webb, Jr., the colonel's son, was to fall some months later in a hand-to-hand whale-boat encounter in the Sound.
So, too, as the emergency called for additional troops, there came down to camp several more of Hale's friends—a number having been with him at the Boston siege—filled with the same bright hopes for their country, and some of whom were to win laurels. His uncle Joseph and cousin Nathan Strong, mentioned in previous chapters, appeared as chaplains for brief terms, and one or more of his brothers and some relatives from Ashford and Canterbury served with the militia. General Gurdon Saltonstall and his son Gilbert, Hale's faithful correspondent, arrived with a New London county brigade only in time to hear of their friend's cruel fate. Gilbert latterly entered the privateer service, and was several times wounded in an action with a British cruiser which in desperation and casualties recalled the sea-fights of Paul Jones. Among college mates, Tallmadge, like Hale, now broke away from his school desk and took the field as adjutant. He was to become a quite famous major of dragoons, and be taken into Washington's confidence in the management of important secret services during the war. Schoolmasters Alden and Marvin, and Mr. Dwight as chaplain, followed in 1777. Wyllys, salutatorian at Hale's commencement, was also here. When New York fell in September, it was his fate to be captured and held a prisoner in the city at the time his classmate was executed. Still other friends and acquaintances now in camp were Isaac Sherman, William Hull and Ezra Selden, who, as battalion and company commanders, were to rush with Wayne into the enemy's stronghold at Stony Point—the most brilliant affair of the war. Had Hale lived, the promise of like service and promotion was before him. Not that he would have sought military honors as such, for a professional soldier he never could have become; but with his talents, aptitude, personal presence and devotion to the cause, he could hardly have retired at the end with less distinction than his companions. He was to be cut down, however, at the threshold, and an unexpected and peculiarly precious remembrance held in reserve for him. The strong purpose and action which have given to the world its martyrs and patriots work out their end in their own way and their own time. For Hale the occasion was to come in the next twenty days. Statue of Hale. City Hall Park, New York. Sons of the Revolution.
HALE IN THE BRITISH LINES—CAPTURE AND EXECUTION AT no period of the war was Washington oppressed with keener anxieties or a heavier responsibility than during the twenty days immediately following the battle of Long Island. As New York was now practically at the mercy of the enemy—their guns on Brooklyn Heights commanding the city—all the preparations of the summer had come to naught, and the hopes of the country disappointed. For the moment his army was dispirited. To restore confidence, repair losses and provide against further defeat required herculean exertion. The faithful chief still hoped to maintain the same brave front, and cling to every foot of the soil he had been called to defend, when a new problem was presented in the changed military situation. It was seen to be full of danger. Within a week, or by September 6th, the British had extended their camps on the Long Island side from Brooklyn to Hell Gate, a distance of seven miles or more, while their fleet threatened the city from below. Where Washington before had been facing south, with Howe on Staten Island, he now found himself in effect facing east, with the narrow East River alone between him and his antagonist. Safety seemed to lie in the instant abandonment of New York and all the island below the line of Harlem.
Loath to retreat until driven by superior force, the American generals held a council of war on the 7th, and determined to defend their position, both city and island. This decision, which has been criticized as unmilitary and almost inexplicable, was to be reversed four days later; but one effect of it, which the council must have anticipated, was to delay the enemy in their next advance. The boldness of this attitude seemed to puzzle even Lord Howe. Washington, more than any one, recognized the risks involved. Against them he also balanced the chances in his favor, as they varied from day to day and from hour to hour. The imminent danger was twofold. As long as it could be observed that the British were not concentrating a flotilla of boats for crossing, the American army could be held intact. One tide at night, however, might bring them up from the bay or from ships in the Sound, in which case another Long Island surprise might be in store. It was furthermore apparent that the red-coats were massing at Newtown and the Hell Gate end of the opposite shores, where they threatened the American flank and rear. The flank would be threatened at Harlem by way of the present Ward's and Randall's islands. Should a large body of troops land there, at about the foot of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, and push across towards the Hudson, it would be interposed between Washington's main army in New York and a smaller force at King's Bridge under General Heath. The question would then be whether Washington could drive the enemy back with loss or suffer more heavily himself in cutting his way through to Heath. The rear was exposed to a more northerly movement across to the Westchester shore and a rapid march upon King's Bridge, by which the Americans would be hemmed in on Manhattan Island. In either attempt on the part of the enemy it was of the first importance to anticipate them. With this critical situation continuing during the first two weeks of September, the tension of Washington's suspense correspondingly increased. If he had been anxious to fathom Howe's plans before the latter began the campaign from Staten Island, he was infinitely more so now. It was not enough to keep a ceaseless watch across the East River. Works and camps were here and there in open view, but what was going on behind them? British headquarters, it was ascertained, were at Newtown, ships were beginning to run by the American batteries in the city, others were reported in the Sound and reinforcements were arriving. When and where was the next blow to fall?
What Washington now longed for and sought was information—full, accurate and speedy information that would throw light on Howe's designs. Like every other commander in history, all through the contest he came to depend much on intelligence gained through the "secret service."1 Authorities on war make the spy an essential of war, especially justifying his utilization by an army defending a great cause and its own soil. This had already been done in the present campaign. As early as July 14th General Hugh Mercer reported his regret to Washington that he could find no one qualified to enter the camp of the British then recently arrived. On August 21st, however, General William Livingston relieved him with the dispatch: "Very providentially I sent a spy last night on Staten Island to obtain intelligence. He has this moment returned in safety." So now, on September 1st, the chief urged Generals Heath and George Clinton to establish "a channel of information" through which frequent reports from the Long Island side could reach him. "Perhaps," he writes, "some might be got who are really Tories for a reasonable reward to undertake it. Those who are friends would be preferable, if they could manage it as well." More anxiously and hurriedly he wrote on the 5th: "As everything in a manner depends on obtaining intelligence of the enemy's motions, I do most earnestly entreat you and General Clinton to exert yourselves to accomplish this most desirable end. Leave no stone unturned, nor do not stick at expense to bring this to pass, as I was never more uneasy than on account of my want of knowledge on this score."
On this point consult article, "The Secret Service of the Revolution," in Magazine of American History, February, 1882. It there appears how far Major Tallmadge, Hale's classmate, assisted Washington in the matter. The latter's accounts show that he expended considerable sums of money for such intelligence.
Other measures against surprise were also provided, such as the organization and more general use of light scouting parties whose intended service is indicated in the letter last quoted. "Keep constant lookouts," Washington instructed Heath," with good glasses, on some commanding heights that look well on to the other shore, and especially into the bays, where boats can be concealed, that they may observe, more particularly in the evening, if there be any uncommon movements. Much will depend upon early intelligence, and meeting the enemy before they can entrench. I should much approve of small harassing parties, stealing, as it were, over in the night, as they might keep the enemy alarmed, and more than probably bring off a prisoner, from whom some valuable intelligence may be obtained."
One of these parties figures vitally in our narrative—the little corps which those familiar with the details of this campaign will recognize as " Knowlton's Rangers." With its organization we come to the turning-point in Hale's career. We reach those few remaining days when he will break away from regimental routine to seek more active duty with this body—when he will find himself in closer touch with the movements and interests of the army at large—when he will know more of the plans and wishes of his beloved commander—when he will feel the thrill of special responsibility—and when, finally, he will not shrink from taking his life in his hands and, single-handed, attempt a service which he feels the demands of the hour require of him.
Companies of rangers had been effective in the French and Indian War. Captains Robert Rogers and Israel Putnam had made a name with them. They had served as the eyes of the old frontier army, and it was just such watchful and tireless men that Washington now needed in his own during the remainder of this campaign. The lack of them was felt on Long Island when Howe stole his night march around the American left. As Putnam had become a rebel major-general and Rogers a loyalist colonel on the other side, the command of the proposed corps fell to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Knowlton, of Ashford, Connecticut, who had gallantly defended the rail fence at Bunker Hill, and in the former war had been a ranger himself. For this body about one hundred and fifty men and twenty officers were regarded as sufficient for present purposes. They appear to have been divided into four companies, and only the best material was admitted to their ranks. The selections were made largely from the regiments of Knowlton's own State, and it is probable that the captains at least were men of his own choice. Two were taken from his own regiment, and of the other two one was Nathan Hale. Whether the latter, hearing of the proposed detachment, volunteered his services, or whether he was invited on account of his recognized fitness, does not appear. We know that he was accepted and served. On the September rolls of Webb's regiment the record is entered that one captain and two lieutenants were on duty with Knowlton, while among the many evidences of service filed away in the Pension Bureau at Washington—the diaries, letters, commissions and sometimes touching statements of old Revolutionary soldiers, whom Congress had long neglected—may be found the brief receipts of moneys due to "the Company of Rangers commanded late by Captain Hale.
[This interesting letter appears in the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections for 1878—the "Heath Papers," p. 283.]
Organized about September 1st, Knowlton's command was quickly on duty at exposed points. One company, certainly, patrolled the Westchester shore, and the others probably the Harlem and Hell Gate flank. They were not engaged on the 15th when Howe finally made his descent on New York, for he crossed some miles below, at Kip's Bay, at the foot of East Thirty-fourth Street. Washington meanwhile had withdrawn the greater part of his force from the city to the northern end of the island, and suffered nothing more serious than a temporary panic and the loss of three or four hundred militiamen. On the following day, however, September 16th, the entire body of Rangers succeeded, by clever scouting, in drawing the van of the British some distance out of their new encampment on the line of One Hundred and Seventh Street, and then, with other troops, distinguished themselves in driving it back again with loss. This was the battle of Harlem Heights, fought partly on the present site of Columbia University; and although it proved a costly victory in the death of the brave and manly leader of the Rangers, it wonderfully cheered the depressed army and stirred the young blood of its soldiers to further effort. With what courage and spirit and relish would not Hale have dashed into this encounter after the long months of regulation duty in camp! Here were fire and action that were real and brought results—the kind of service he had been clearly eager for, and which now under Knowlton it seemed that he could render. But Hale was not here. Probably of all the Rangers he alone was absent from the Harlem field—nevertheless to be found somewhere on some kind of duty, we may be assured. At the very hour that his comrades were developing the position of the enemy and fighting hard and grandly to retrieve the loss and panic of the previous day, he was far over on the shores of Long Island on the point of undertaking the hazardous errand with which his name is associated.
As Knowlton, in the capacity of partisan leader, received his instructions directly from the Commander-in-Chief, he came necessarily to enter confidentially into his anxieties and wishes. There is no record to follow here, "no unearthed reports of interviews and orders, but if Washington had urged Mercer and Livingston and Heath and Clinton to use every means to obtain information of the enemy, employing spies if they could, he obviously urged the same on Knowlton, in whose military tact he had great confidence. If it belonged to any one it would belong to an officer whose business it was to keep in close touch with the opposite picket lines, to see what could be done by stealthy means. The office of a spy was doubtless as repugnant to the fearless Ranger as to any soldier in the army, but in the present emergency, between the 1st and 10th of September, he could not ignore the call upon him and he broached the matter to one or more of his captains and subordinates. Possibly he was directed to do so by Washington himself. The veil that usually hangs over the transactions of the secret service is tightly drawn in this case, and we are largely left to conjecture as to Knowlton's presentation of the subject. Of one thing only have we positive information, and that is, that among his officers Captain Nathan Hale, after conversations with his colonel, became deeply impressed with the situation and the unexpected duty which seemed to devolve on some one in his corps. The question broke full upon him, at first perhaps like a shadow, and again like a summons—Shall he become a spy?
There could have been no climax or dramatic incidents, as usually represented, connected with Hale's acceptance of this service. Out of keeping with his character, inconsistent with military usage, and not well authenticated, they may be discarded as weakening the otherwise sustained and winning naturalness of the story.1 It is just at this point that the young patriot reveals himself and shines in his own light. He does not act from impulse. Fortunately, we have an expression of his views in the case, and know what considerations moved him. In so grave a matter he would seek advice, and to no one could he open his mind more freely than to his college associate and fellow captain, William Hull. From the latter we have the substance of the interview. "There was no young man," writes this officer, "who gave fairer promise of an enlightened and devoted service to his country than this my friend and companion in arms. His naturally fine intellect had been carefully cultivated, and his heart was filled with generous emotions; but, like the soaring eagle, the patriotic ardor of his soul 'winged the dart which caused his destruction.' After his interview with Colonel Knowlton, he repaired to my quarters and informed me of what had passed. He remarked that he thought he owed to his country the accomplishment of an object so important and so much desired by the commander of her armies, and he knew of no other mode of obtaining the information than by assuming a disguise and passing into the enemy's camp. He asked my candid opinion."1 Hull then replied, as he tells us, by laying before Hale the hateful service of a spy, and his own unfitness for the role, as being too frank and open for deceit and evasion, and warned him of the consequences. He predicted, indeed, that should he undertake the enterprise, his short, bright career would close with an ignominious death. In Hale's reply, spoken, says Hull, with warmth and decision, we have a fitting prelude to his dying words: "I am fully sensible of the consequences of discovery and capture in such a situation. But for a year I have been attached to 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 expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward; 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."
1 Stuart has generally been followed in his description of a meeting between Knowlton and his officers, where, after an appeal in the name of Washington for a volunteer to enter the enemy's lines, with no response from any one, there presently "came a voice with the painfully thrilling yet cheering words—"I will undertake it!' That was the voice of Captain Nathan Hale. He had come late into the assembly of officers. Scarcely yet recovered from a severe illness, his face still pale, without his accustomed strength of body, yet firm and ardent as ever of soul, he volunteered at once, reckless of its danger, and though doubtless appalled, not vanquished by its disgrace, to discharge the repudiated trust." Stuart probably accepted some tradition to this effect. Hull, however, tells us that Hale had the matter under consideration and sought his advice. Sergeant Hempstead, the captain's attendant, states that he declined the proposition at first on account of recent illness, but accepted on further reflection.
[The information Washington needed is indicated on pp. 90—93. He wanted frequent intelligence on two points—when will the British be ready to cross the East River or make any movement, and where will they attack?
Hull's memoirs, from which the above quotations are taken, were not published until 1847; but in her history of New England, Hannah Adams published a special account of Hale, written by Hull. This was in 1799, when the facts were comparatively fresh in his memory. The memoir gives further particulars.]
Once more Hull urged him, for love of country and of kindred, to abandon the project. Hale paused a moment, then affectionately taking his companion by the hand, added as he went out: "I will reflect, and do nothing but what duty demands." When Hull next heard of him it was the shocking word that his prediction had proved true. That Hale should take so lofty and unusual a view of the obligations of the service upon him, when others did not, needs no other explanation than one finds in his own words and in his training and moral fiber. It was his view of duty. There was something of what has been called the Puritan inwardness in the process by which he reached his decision. In the previous century he would have made a soldier after Cromwell's own heart—an Ironside who could pray mightily and fight as he prayed. If a service was to be performed which the crisis demanded, in the performance of it all consequences were to be excluded from consideration. In this case the situation seemed to the earnest youth to require the highest and most unselfish effort. Washington's latest order, following the retreat from Long Island, called especially upon the officers of all grades "to exert themselves and gloriously determine to conquer or die," and Hale's answer came in the resolution he now formed. This question—the momentous question of his life—thus settled, the patriot captain left camp on his perilous mission, with the calm and sustaining courage, we must believe, which such a decision would inspire. The time of his departure can be fixed with some degree of accuracy through his brother Enoch, who notes in his diary that it was "about the second week " of September, or approximately the 10th or 12th of the month. Guided by the recollections of his sergeant, Hempstead, who, at Hale's request, accompanied him a certain distance as an attendant, we can also trace his steps well towards his destination. The safest route lay across the Sound and along the roads of Long Island, around to the rear of the British army on the East River. This was one of the lines of secret communication effectively utilized by Washington in later years, and he may have indicated it for the present initial venture.1 With a general order in his pocket from the Commander-in-Chief to the captains of armed craft to convey him to any point he might designate, Hale proceeded through West. [Whether Hale received instructions as to his route and the information required directly from Washington or from the latter through Colonel Knowlton, is not clear. It was necessary for the Commander-in-Chief to give his consent to the enterprise.] Hempstead implies that the captain twice visited headquarters on the business,—headquarters then being at the Morrier house on the west side, above the line of present Canal Street, Dorchester County into Connecticut, where no opportunity of crossing offered until he reached Norwalk.1 Had he attempted the start from a point further west—from Throg's Neck, City Island, or New Rochelle—the risks would have been great, for British men-of-war were hovering in the vicinity, with their tenders scouring the shores for skiffs and boats. As this was one of the objects of Hale's errand, to ascertain what movement these ships might be trying to blind or directly facilitate, it behooved him, above all things, to avoid them at this stage of his route.
At Norwalk, Hale found an armed sloop, in command, as Hempstead states, of a Captain Pond, with whom he arranged to be set across the Sound at Huntington, Long Island, twelve or fifteen miles distant. There are grounds for inferring that this was Charles Pond, of Milford, Connecticut, one of Hale's fellow-captains in the Nineteenth Regiment, necessarily well known to him, and whose own hardy and daring spirit would lead him to further his comrade's enterprise.
How Captain Pond came to be in the naval service and at Norwalk at this particular moment revives some incidents in the exciting warfare of the Revolutionary privateers of which as yet we know but little. In this instance the documents of the time help us to the extent that among the vessels which the Provincial Convention of New York had fitted out to guard the coast were two armed sloops named the Montgomery and the Schuyler, commanded respectively by Captains William Rogers and James Smith. In May, 1776, Smith resigned his commission and the Schuyler passed as a Continental sloop under the command of Captain Pond, who, as one of the skilful sailors in his regiment, was probably detached for temporary service at sea. During the summer these two small vessels cruised from Sandy Hook to Montauk Point and sent their prizes into Rhode Island and Connecticut or stranded them in the inlets of the South Shore. On June 19th, Pond reported to Washington the capture, off Fire Island, of an English merchantman with a valuable cargo, which Washington in turn was gratified to report to Congress. With the defeat on Long Island, the successful run of these vessels was cut short. The enemy's ships—among them the Cerberus, Merlin and Syren—became more active and drove the American craft into safer waters. The Montgomery and the Schuyler, which at times cruised in company, slipped by these watch-dogs, and about September 3d sailed into New London harbor. A few days later one of them certainly, and doubtless both, reported at Norwalk. Hale would thus find them there on his arrival. The usual ferry to Long Island, run by the Raymond's of Norwalk, had been interrupted by the presence in that vicinity of the British twelve-gun brig Halifax, commanded by Captain Quarme, and in her unpublished log we find an entry which seems to be confirmatory of the foregoing and may furnish the approximate date of Hale's crossing. Cruising off Huntington on the 17th, Quarme learned that "two rebel privateers" had been seen in the neighborhood.1 Suspecting that they might be lurking in the inlets of the bay, he armed his boats and tenders and sent them in search of the craft, but without result. These privateers could have been none other than the Montgomery and the Schuyler, still keeping in company, and to be reported on the 17th they must have crossed on the night of the 15th or 16th. It was from the Schuyler, then,—Captain Pond's vessel,—we have every reason to believe, that Hale landed on the Huntington shore on one of these dates—the days of the loss of New York and the battle of Harlem Heights. The final preparations, in themselves enough to test both nerve and soul, had been made at Norwalk, and Hale was ready. It is from Hempstead alone that we have the few details. "Captain Hale," he tells us, "had changed his uniform for a plain suit of citizen's brown clothes, with a round, broad brimmed hat; assuming the character of a Dutch schoolmaster, leaving all his other clothes, commission, public and private papers with me, and also his silver shoe buckles, saying they would not comport with his character of schoolmaster, and retaining nothing but his college diploma, as an introduction to his assumed calling. Thus equipped, we parted for the last time in life. He went on his mission and I returned back again to Norwalk with orders to stop there till he should return, or I hear from him, as he expected to cross the Sound if he succeeded in his object."
A Dutch schoolmaster with a New England diploma! The pleasantry may have come from the strong and expectant youth, but in any case, Dutch or Yankee, if he was to play his part in broad daylight the schoolmaster's was his natural role.
Here on the shores of Huntington Bay, where he landed, until the fatal night of his capture Hale is completely lost to our view. He had crossed the danger line into the enemy's territory and we cannot follow him further except as the briefest allusions appear from British sources. At the point where we would wish to keep pace with him the curtain falls with an abrupt concealment of what must have been a deeply interesting and possibly thrilling experience. One thing may be noticed. Soon after landing he necessarily learned that New York had been captured on the 15th and the Americans defeated and crowded back to the heights above Harlem. On that date, as stated, Lord Howe had made his delayed attack, and by nightfall was in possession of the city and two thirds of the island. The wearing anxiety as to his movements was over, and Hale was too late for the immediate information Washington needed. The situation had materially changed in a day and the question could well force itself upon him whether he should not return to camp, where service with his Rangers might prove more important. The circumstances would seem to have entirely justified this step. But he went on. With his sense of duty as controlling as ever, and his soldierly pride more immediately touched now that he stood on hostile soil, he doubtless felt that if another defeat had befallen his comrades, a greater anxiety prevailed as to the enemy's next movements, and that he must continue in his effort for their relief. His persistence at this point, where he could have returned with honor, again foreshadows the heroism with which he will accept his fate. Beyond noting certain facts and inferences which bear upon the point, there would be little to gain in speculating on Hale's course and methods during the six or seven days in which he was now to play the spy. At Huntington he was still some forty miles distant from his objective point,—the main British army on New York Island,—and with the caution required in making his way, it would take him one third or more of the time to reach it.
There were also the camps on the Long Island side opposite Hell Gate, with the suspicious ships, boats and tenders scattered towards Throg's Neck, and of these he must learn as much as possible. In passing along the roads in the rear of the army from Huntington through Hempstead and Jamaica, or around by Flushing and Newtown, and on to New York City by way of Brooklyn, now Fulton, Ferry—whatever route he followed—he should have found the moment favorable in one respect. With the battle of Long Island and the loss of New York regarded as crushing defeats for the Americans, the Tories in King's and Queen's counties were in high glee in anticipation of the speedy end of the rebellion. The old authority was reestablished. The lukewarm were taking the oath of allegiance. Generals Erskine and Delancey were already suppressing the Whigs. Loyalists were enlisting. There was more going to and fro on the highways. A rebel spy would hardly be looked for there. If Hale was brought up with a round turn to account for himself, he could readily explain that he was one of the Connecticut refugees who were just then beginning to cross the Sound singly or in small parties. Without friends, he could claim the king's protection and seek employment in New York. On the other hand, at times, some untoward circumstance, some strict regulation, some ungrounded fear putting him on his guard, he may have concealed himself during the day and moved anxiously along in the shadows of the night. It may also be pointed out that he would be wary as to how he showed himself in the city. Much of the old population, the poorer element especially, unable to leave with the Americans or happy at the change of masters, remained. Hale had been encamped there five months. There were negroes, laborers, loiterers, sharp-eyed boys, market-people, innkeepers and others who would recognize and might face him at any turn. His striking features and manly form could hardly be disguised. Peculiar dangers as well as opportunities presented themselves. Who can tell how that critical interval was passed? The movements of spies seldom come to light,—the case of Andre, so remarkably consecutive in detail, being a rare exception or more properly a case of a different character.
Of this we seem to be certain—the assurance coming from the British themselves—that down to the moment of arrest Hale had conducted his desperate and unfamiliar business with courage, skill and address. At the time of his capture his observations as a spy had been completed. The important fact comes to us from Howe's own headquarters, that upon examination of the prisoner it was found that he had passed through their encampments both on Long Island and at New York, and had made memoranda of the situation. This was an adroit and successful piece of work. The main body of the enemy, as already indicated, then lay across Manhattan Island, along the general line of One Hundred and Seventh Street, where they had begun to entrench and fortify after the action of the 16th. If the memoranda found on Hale's person included drawings or outlines of works, the works must have been these they were now busily constructing. There were no others. It was a line of five or six redouts, running east and west, three of which stood on the high ground at the upper end of present Central Park.1 Whether Hale caught glimpses of their outline stealthily, or was able to examine them as one of many onlookers permitted to visit the camps, can only be conjectured. But if he were actually there, what sensations must have moved him at the moment! From the Central Park site he was but one mile away from, and in full view of, the American outposts at Point of Rocks, near Eighth Avenue and One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street. To the east of that point were the quarters of his own company of Rangers. Near by, on the heights to the west, lay the field of the Harlem battle, and to it his eyes must have longingly turned as for the first time he may have learned, from the casual conversations of British soldiers, that there the rebels had fought like heroes, and that none fell more bravely than their leader Knowlton. The associations would crowd upon him, and doubly so, for to reach his own army across the plain seemed but a step.
The week passed and the end came. On the evening of September 22d the regular daily orders from the British commander-in-chief to his army contained an unusual announcement—nothing quite like it to be repeated during the war—which doubtless afforded the gossip around the camp-fires that night, some of the red-coats listening with merely passing curiosity, and others indulging in contemptuous hilarity and satisfaction that the rebels were getting their deserts in whatever game they played. On the same evening the information was conveyed to the American lines, to fall heavily on the ears of Hale's friends and companions in arms.
With official brevity the paragraph in the order ran:
"Head Q New York Island, September 22 1776 Parole, London Count: Great Britain
A spy from the Enemy (by his own full confession) apprehended last night, was this day Executed at 11 O'Clock in front of the Artilery Park"
[The late Mr. William Kelby, librarian of the New York Historical Society, was the first to discover this important order. As an indefatigable student of local history, he was much interested in Hale's career and fate in New York.]
Precisely when, where and under what circumstances Hale was captured and executed has been a matter of tradition and uncertainty. Until Howe's orders came to light a few years since, concisely establishing several of the disputed points, the accounts as given by Stuart and Lossing were generally followed. From the new and final authority we know that Hale was "apprehended" on the night of September 21st, that he was executed at eleven o'clock in the forenoon of the 22nd, and that the place of his execution was the camp of the British artillery, wherever its location may have been at that date. As to the place of his capture, on which the order throws no light except indirectly, Stuart was the first biographer to attempt to fix it definitely, resting his theory on recollections and circumstances gathered in his day. It was then believed that after successfully completing his observations, Captain Hale returned to Huntington, as he had told Hempstead that he expected to do, where he spent some hours in waiting or looking for a boat to convey him back to Norwalk. As he approached the shore at one point, he suddenly found himself the victim of treachery or his own misapprehension, and he was seized. The boat that he saw proved to be a barge from the Halifax, or, according to another account, from the Cerberus, and its crew, with leveled muskets, called on him to surrender as he turned to escape. His arrest followed and he was sent by water to be delivered up at Howe's headquarters in New York.
No inherent improbability attaches to the main statement in this account that Hale returned to Huntington. Taking two or three days to reach New York, two days in the enemy's camp, and two or three days on the way back, and the trip was possible. One line in the British order, however, seems to undermine the supposition. As the prisoner was captured on "the night" of the 21st, and was in the hands of the provost-marshal some hours before his execution, it would have been impossible to bring him from Huntington in any interval that might be left. In addition, the alleged circumstances of his capture are unlikely, vague and inconsistent. For one thing, neither the Halifax nor the Cerberus was off Huntington at this date. The latter, as its log informs us, was stationed at Block Island. The log of the former, in which every incident appears to be noticed, makes no mention of anything so creditable to her crew as the capture of a spy. All that Captain Quarme is represented to have said about and in praise of Hale must be dismissed as purely mythical.
On the other hand, the contemporary references and the probabilities in the case all point to New York or its immediate vicinity as the place of Hale's capture. Late in the evening of the 22d, Captain John Montressor, of the British Engineers, now serving as aide-de-camp to Lord Howe, appeared under flag of truce at the American outposts on Harlem Plains. He was bearer of a letter to Washington respecting the exchange of prisoners. Among those who went down to meet him were Adjutant General Reed, General Putnam, Captain Alexander Hamilton and Captain William Hull. To them Montressor verbally gave the information that one Captain Hale, an American officer, had been executed that morning as a spy. It was startling news, and to Hull it came like a shock. What further facts the latter obtained will presently appear; but the impression was conveyed that Hale was captured "within the British lines." A week later the terrible word reached Hale's family. Crushed by the reports and anxious to know all, Enoch Hale rode down to camp and gathered what particulars were to be had. In his diary he enters the important fact, new in this connection, that he received information through "aide-de-camp Webb with a flag." This must have been Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel B. Webb, then one of Washington's staff, and the implication is strong that he was the bearer of his chief's reply to Howe a few days later, and was instructed at the same time to make further inquiries into Hale's case. Too brief is Enoch's memorandum to satisfy our deep interest right here, but still to the point. Webb brought word, he writes, that Nathan, "being suspected by his movements that he wanted to get out of New York, was taken up and examined by the general, and, some minutes being found with him, orders were immediately given that he should be hanged. When at the gallows, he spoke and told that he was a Captain in the Continental army, by name Nathan Hale." Enoch took the distressing details home, and subsequently his brother John made this entry in the town records of Coventry: "Capt. Nathan Hale, the son of Deacon Richard Hale was taken in the City of New York by the Britons and Executed as a spy some time in the Month of September A.D. 1776." Sergeant Hempstead, Asher Wright, Hale's waiter, and the first letter published giving any particulars in the case, February 13, 1777, all state that the capture took place in New York.
How Hale attempted to make his escape, what his movements were by which it was suspected, as Enoch states that "he wanted to get out of New York," has yet to come to light. Hempstead's understanding was that he endeavored to pass the British pickets on the Harlem front, somewhere along the line of One Hundred and Tenth or Twelfth streets, from which he could quickly reach the outposts of his own camp. This is entirely probable. The great fire in New York which broke out that morning was laid to secret rebel incendiaries, and he would keep away from the strictly guarded ferries. Finding that concealment was hourly becoming more difficult, or that a plausible account of himself would be immediately and closely investigated, he may have resolved to make a dash for freedom across the lines. Or, to notice a later supposition, he may have succeeded in crossing the East River and was arrested on that side. But whether challenged at the picket posts or halted by the patrols of the provost-marshal, Hale's fate was sealed. "Apprehended last night" is all that we certainly know, but the reference clearly limits the locality to the vicinity of the British army.
Upon the capture of New York, the British generals established their headquarters in the finest country-seats to be found in the neighborhood of the camps. Lord Howe selected the beautiful residence of James Beekman, overlooking the East River at Turtle Bay. Its site was at the corner of Fifty-first Street and First Avenue. Earl Percy was five streets above, on what was then known as the Hurst and afterwards the Thomas Buchanan estate. Sir Henry Clinton would have been found in a house still further up, near Hell Gate Ferry, and Cornwallis quartered apparently in the handsome Apthorpe place on the west side. It was to the Beekman mansion, or one of its outlying buildings, as believed, that Captain Hale was taken on the night of the 21st. Reported as a suspicious character, or caught in an attempt to escape to the rebels, it was a case of sufficient importance to lay before Lord Howe himself. A brief examination followed. Pointed questions were put, and then the prisoner searched for concealed papers. Such were found, consisting, according to Hull, of sketches of fortifications and military notes, and they convicted him. Taken up—examined by the general—minutes found upon his person—is the condensed but certain record. There was but one conclusion—the prisoner was a spy; and for a spy no mercy is conceivable,—the only mercy lying in the summary punishment meted out. The proofs before him, Howe immediately issued an order for Hale's execution.
Suddenly and relentlessly as this examination and sentence came, they were relieved by one bright passage whose deeper meaning the British general could not have appreciated. Four words in his order announcing Hale's fate have a precious value for this story. In telling his troops that this was a spy on "his own full confession," it was doubtless to present it not only as a clear but also as an aggravated case, illustrating the American method of warfare, in which spies confessed to their employment, and thus directly implicating Washington and Congress. But to those who have come to know Hale, "his own full confession" carries in it the ring of his character and knightly manhood. His honor and his patriotism asserted themselves in this most trying moment. More than one high-minded British officer must have felt that it was no mean, mercenary fellow who had been hanged that morning, but a brave opponent, after all, who could frankly acknowledge his purpose and stoutly face the consequences. Montressor, for one, must have thought so. Next to having Hale's dying words, we would wish to know how he answered Howe that night, when confronted with the evidence of his errand. No explanation, no evasion, no base cringing with an offer to enlist in his army, no cowardly cry for pardon could come from him. That he gave his name at once, also his rank in the Continental army, and stated his object in entering the British lines, we casually know through Hull from Montressor; but what more might he not have confessed—his love for his Washington, his hopes for the new nation and his conviction of final success? In this full admission it is still the Hale whom we have been following that we see—the true, self-poised, undaunted youth, whose ingrained nobility no circumstance or peril could affect.
As tradition goes, the prisoner was guarded that night in the greenhouse of the Beekman gardens. Hardly probable, as generally supposed, that for the few hours remaining he would be taken to the city jail, the present Hall of Records, four miles away. Such a prisoner would be remanded to the keeping of the provost-marshal of the army, whose quarters were near the commanding general's. This provost-marshal was William Cunningham, a man with whom all the cruelties of the prison-houses in New York during the Revolution are associated. We need not dwell upon his record. As yet he had had less to do with American captives than with British offenders. Perhaps it was the terror of his name that made Howe's Newtown orders of September 6th all the more effective: "The Provost Martial has a commission to execute upon the spot any soldier he finds guilty of marauding." Executions may have already become an old story with him.
With the next morning—Sunday, September 22, 1776—we have the closing incidents, the brief preparations, and the final scene. Hale's last hours in the greenhouse could have been spent only as a man brought up under the Christian influences of the time would spend them. Sleepless they would be, with the great struggle within him—every tender association rushing upon his memory and welling up in his heart; then the fervent prayers, the visions of the opening heaven, the resulting deep and calm resignation, and, above all, the glorious uplifting thought that he was to fall, with so many others before and after him, in a cause worth any sacrifice. The inhuman Cunningham, we are told, refused him the attendance of a clergyman or the use of a Bible. As the time approached and there was some delay, Captain Montressor requested the provost-marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in his tent—on or close to the Beekman grounds it would be1—until the preparations were completed. Hale entered and "bore himself with gentle dignity." He asked for writing-materials, which Montressor furnished him, and he wrote two letters, one to his mother2 and one to a brother officer. They never reached their destination. "The Provost Martial," says Hull, "in the diabolical spirit of cruelty, destroyed the letters of the prisoner, 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.'"
When, four years later, Major Andre was executed in the American lines, a certain military dignity was observed in the parade of troops, the formation of a square, the erection of a gibbet, and in the gathering of many spectators. But Andre was adjutant-general of the British army and his case involved the corruption and treason of an Arnold. The occasion was made impressive. For Hale, a rebel and self-confessed spy, there was no such ceremony. Towards eleven o'clock he was marched off by files of the provost-guard to some convenient tree, no doubt, in front of a neighboring camp. They would not take him far. The long accepted tradition that Hale was executed in Colonel Henry Rutgers' orchard, overlooking the river at the foot of the present East Broadway, then on the outskirts of the city, must give way with other traditions before the official order of September 22nd. [That order informs us unmistakably that the execution took place "in front of the Artilery Park"; and from the entries of the same orderly-book and other authoritative records it is possible to fix its site with satisfactory accuracy.] As might properly be assumed from what has already appeared, this park could have been at no great distance from the Beekman mansion. The references all indicate that it was immediately south of it, on the adjoining grounds—the grounds of the old Turtle Bay farm, then belonging to the heirs of Admiral Sir Peter Warren. The bay itself was a deep notch in the rocky shore extending from the present Forty-fifth to Forty-eighth Street, on the south side of which stood a dock and two government powder-magazines of colonial days. Near these buildings would have been found encamped, in the summer of 1766, a part of the city's garrison consisting of two hundred men of the Royal Artillery, with eight field-guns and four heavy siege pieces. Occasionally they drilled on a large plain a mile above them, which was probably the site of the proposed Hamilton Square of later days, extending easterly from the Seventh Regiment Armory. At one corner of it, about Sixty-sixth Street and Third Avenue, there stood the "Dove Tavern," a well-known inn on the main highway. When, now ten years later, the British were on these shores again, their artillery was parked on the same site at Turtle Bay. The corps being very much larger than in 1766, a portion of it, as it would seem, moved a little later to the field near the tavern. From the Beekman house one could look down across a lot and running brook to the original camp. It may be pertinently noted that on the very day of Hale's capture an order respecting the issue of provisions to the army directed the artillery to receive theirs "at Turtle Bay." As to the "front" of the park, or the spot to which the prisoner had now been brought, we may locate it approximately near the corner of Forty-fifth Street and First Avenue.
[Necessarily, for he was Howe's aide. "On the morning of the execution my station was near the fatal spot," are Montressor's words as reported by Hull. It so appears in Hull's memoirs. As Hale's own mother was not living, possibly this should be "brother." Enoch or his father would be his first thought in his family.]
The site seemed to be established years ago, on the testimony of two old men who claimed to have witnessed Hale's execution there. Stuart was at a loss in the case, but assumed that the place must have been near the city jail, or somewhere on Chambers Street.
Here Hale stood pinioned and guarded—here, where less than six months before he had landed with his regiment fresh from the Boston success and eager for a greater one at New York. For him the scene had changed. The same blue bay and river, the same rugged banks, more beautiful in their verdure, and the same stately mansion were in the view; but all were to fade before the overwhelming fact that he was now at the very center of the British army and held in its merciless grip. In the distance were the enemy's battle-ships and transports, the dock was piled with supplies and material of war, the field in front was brilliant with the equipage of the most powerful arm of the king's service. In this respect at least the youth was not to die obscurely. It was a striking turn of incidents, but for his memory a most happy one that brought this condemned American spy to his grave under the very shadow of Lord Howe's headquarters. But for this should we ever have been able to be with him in his last moments, to be assured once more of the constancy of his devotion and hear the noble words of his dying breath? It is significant that the closing details come to us through a British staff officer and a witness of the execution. Most fortunate, too, that they were repeated by him on the same day, under flag of truce, to one of Hale's sincerest friends—the friend whose advice he sought before undertaking his mission—the friend whose memory would retain and cherish such an interview through life. With the execution occurring elsewhere, in another presence, in or near the city, perhaps before a gaping or brutal crowd, this record we would not be without might never have been preserved—nothing beyond the hardened message that the missing captain had suffered as a spy. The locality and surroundings are all-important. Not only do they enable us to fill out the story in the sunlight of its close, but they seem to assure us, also, that no unnecessary indignities attended the prisoner's death. Whatever the unfeeling Cunningham may have said or done—we are happily spared that knowledge—no insulting throng could have gathered to the spot. A few officers and artillerymen, some camp-followers, the stolid provost-guard, looked on, and the end came with its quick, unceremonious, cruel work.
But above its assumed ignominy the end came gloriously. As for the fated youth, he died as we have been expecting him to die, as all true souls have died in the loyal performance of duty—calmly, bravely, with one fervent wish for the cause he could no longer serve. There was no scenic effect. Little could Hale have imagined that what he might say to his executioner and his enemies around him would ever reach the ears of his comrades. From the foot of the Beekman slopes it could be and was destined to be heard. Not many words would he be allowed or would he care to speak, nor were they to be words of defiance or execration, or of sounding prediction that Britain's efforts would fail. No occasion will he give the spectators to drown his words with gibes and sneering laughter. His heart was elsewhere, steadfast and absorbed as ever in the great movement in which he and his loved companions were engaged. His enemies will hear something unexpected—something a few may reflect upon—something My Lord Howe's aide will think worth reporting across the lines. In the rebel and the spy before them did they see the enduring faith and unconquerable spirit of America? Hardly could the face and form of this young scholar, teacher, soldier and now the most devoted of patriots, have impressed them as the embodiment of a senseless revolt. For us Hale stands there as an inspiration—the genius of the new land to which he would devote all and more than he can give. As the moments passed and few remained, the grim preparations—the ladder, the hangman, the grave at his feet—had no terrors for him. This death, with the traditional infamy men attached to it, he had already accepted, and he faced it heroically. The promptings in his breast were strong and irrepressible. He had something to say, whoever might hear. Among the faces turned upon him was there one with a touch of sympathy in the glance? It mattered little. First, as it would appear, he freely told them who he was and why he was there, and then, with the breath that was left him, came the inborn, spontaneous sentiment we now carve in bronze and marble—the burning thought and emotion that filled his soul and broke out in words that move the souls of all who read them:
"I ONLY REGRET THAT I HAVE BUT ONE LIFE TO LOSE FOR MY COUNTRY."
Many years elapsed—half a century or more—before this martyr-like sacrifice met with any general recognition. It could not have been otherwise. Official mention of the case at the time was out of the question. Hale was engaged on secret and delicate business, and the result, whether favorable or unfavorable, it was not for the army to know. While nothing could be said or done—the execution, under military law, being entirely justifiable—it would appear that Washington was sensibly disturbed by the occurrence. Did he feel a certain responsibility in the case? Whatever may have passed between himself, Knowlton and Hale, he alone could give final permission and the orders enabling the latter to pass beyond the American lines. As the situation, however, justified almost any sacrifice, Washington would entertain no compunctions on that score. For the moment indignation prevailed at headquarters, and officers of the staff would have enjoyed the capture of some one on a similar errand in their own camp to hang in return. One of their number, Colonel Tench Tilghman, happened to be then engaged in a confidential correspondence with William Duer, chairman of the New York committee of safety, in regard to the disposition of certain Tories who had been arrested for organizing on New York territory. The State authorities being unwilling to go to extremes in the matter, one will find in Tilghman's manuscripts this reply which he sent to Duer, October 3, 1776: "I am sorry that your convention do not think themselves legally authorized to make examples of those Villians they have apprehended; if that is the case, the well-affected will be hardly able to keep a watch upon the ill. The General is determined, if he can bring some of them in his hands under the denomination of Spies, to execute them. General Howe hanged a Captain of ours belonging to Knowlton's Rangers who went into New York to make discoveries. I don't see why we should not make retaliation." A few of these Tories having been taken to camp, Duer implored Tilghman: "In the name of Justice hang two or three of the Villians you have apprehended." All were in the mood to visit vengeance somewhere, but proofs of guilt were wanting. [Italics the author's, who had an opportunity of examining these manuscripts some years ago.]
Four years later the slumbering memory of Hale was suddenly revived by the capture of Andre. Proofs enough then. While Hale's fate could not have affected the disposition of Andrews case, it is certain that officers of the army placed the two on the same footing. Nearly all of Hale's comrades were still in the field, and he could not be forgotten. If the American captain was a spy, so was this British prisoner, whatever his rank or plea. It was Tallmadge who first reminded Andre of his much-loved classmate, as he called him, and his arrest in the British lines in 1776. "Do you remember the sequel of the story?" he asked. "Yes," said Andr6; "he was hanged as a spy. But you surely do not consider his case and mine alike?" "Yes; precisely similar," said Tallmadge, when pressed for a reply; "and similar will be your fate." From that date—1780—the names of Hale and Andre have been frequently associated by writers on the Revolution, and their characters and mission compared and contrasted. It is not as a spy, however, but as a soldier, that Hale stands on the records of the Continental army. One of the illustrations in these pages is the facsimile of a rare paper, the only known return of casualties in the Nineteenth Regiment, with the entry: Nathan Hale, "Captain, killed, September 22, 1776."
Among our earlier scholars and poets, Dwight remembered his lamented student-friend with deep feeling and appreciation. Could Hale have heard his instructor read from the pages of his "Conquest of Canaan" while he was composing it at college? The stately epic opens with scenes in the camp of the redoubtable Joshua. Before the chieftain lies a heathen city, and towards it he sends the faithful captain, Zimri, to spy out its defenses.
"In night's last gloom (so Joshua's will ordained) To find what hopes the cautious foe remained, Or what new strength, allied, increased their force, To Ai's high walls the hero bent his course."
With him on the enterprise went forth his trusted companion, Aram. "Aram, his friend, With willing footsteps shared the dangerous way; In virtue joined, one soul to both was given."
As they approached the city a lurking enemy pierced young Aram to the heart, while Zimri cut the assailant down in a quick but unavailing effort to protect his comrade. "Fond virtue" failed to save. When Dwight heard of Hale's fate, "emotions of regard," as he states, prompted him to associate his memory with the martyr of his own creation; and at this point he inserted the passage so often quoted: "Thus, while fond virtue wished in vain to save, Hale, bright and generous, found a hapless grave. With genius' living flame his bosom glowed, And Science lured him to her sweet abode; In Worth's fair path his feet adventured far, The pride of Peace, the rising hope of War; In duty firm, in danger calm as even— To friends unchanging, and sincere to Heaven. How short his course, the prize how early won, While weeping Friendship mourns her favorite gone."
Nathan Hale statue Statue Of Hale, Capitol Building, Hartford, Connecticut.
With this tribute from one of the worthiest men of the time we close these pages. Such testimony to Hale's character, aspirations and promise, and the testimony of friends and foes alike to the brand of his patriotism and the grandeur of his sacrifice, present a life to be remembered. The shortness of its years is immaterial—on the contrary, its charm and its suggestion. There can be power in youth as well as in manhood. Historical names and careers commanding our respect and admiration exist in profusion—to the honor of human nature be it said. But with Hale there is something rarer—he is endeared to us. We are embalming his memory in the customary forms, but it also appeals most touchingly as a personal heirloom.
—cov