Washington had learned this unforgetable lesson in Braddock's campaign, and, as full commander and wholly responsible not only for the immediate safety but for the future success of his little army, he realized the necessity of obtaining the most accurate information possible.

A corps collected from the best men in the army was organized, and its command was given to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton. He had gained experience as a ranger in the French and Indian War, and was noted for his coolness, skill, and bravery at Bunker Hill. One hundred and fifty men and twenty officers were considered sufficient for the work a.s.signed to this special corps, known as Knowlton's Rangers. They were divided into four companies. Two of the captains of these men were chosen from Knowlton's own regiment; the other two--one of them Nathan Hale--were from other companies. There can be little doubt that Nathan Hale was proud of his enrollment in this brave corps.

After Hale's services were ended, one brief record remained of "moneys due to the Company of Rangers commanded late by Captain Hale." After the 1st of September, about which time this company of Rangers was organized, it was constantly on duty wherever its services were required, and one can easily imagine Nathan Hale's enthusiasm in his enlarged duties.

Knowlton spoke to some of his officers of the wishes of the commanding general for some one to enter upon this special secret service,--wishes that so appealed to Hale that he at once seriously considered offering himself for the hazardous undertaking.

Captain Hull, two years his senior in age, and one year in advance of him in Yale, a close friend while in college and during their subsequent days, shall describe the personal interview between himself and Captain Hale in regard to this matter. It is said that many remonstrated with Hale at his decision, but Hull's statement shows the arguments of a practical man against which Hale had to contend.

In his memoirs Captain Hull writes thus of his last interview with Captain Hale:

"After his interview with Col. Knowlton, he repaired to my quarters and informed me of what had pa.s.sed. He remarked 'I think I owe to my country the accomplishment of an object so important, and so much desired by the commander of her armies--and I know of no other mode of obtaining the information than by a.s.suming a disguise and pa.s.sing into the enemy's camp.'

"He asked my candid opinion. I replied that it was an act which involved serious consequences, and the propriety of it was doubtful; and though he viewed the business of a spy as a duty, yet he could not officially be required to perform it; that such a service was not claimed of the meanest soldier, though many might be willing, for a pecuniary compensation, to engage in it; and as for himself, the employment was not in keeping with his character. His nature was too frank and open for deceit and disguise, and he was incapable of acting a part equally foreign to his feelings and habits. Admitting that he was successful, who would wish success at such a price? Did his country demand the moral degradation of her sons, to advance her interests?

"Stratagems are resorted to in war; they are feints and evasions, performed under no disguise; are familiar to commanders; form a part of their plans, and, considered in a military view, lawful and advantageous. The tact with which they are executed exacts admiration from the enemy. But who respects the character of a spy, a.s.suming the garb of friendship but to betray? The very death a.s.signed him is expressive of the estimation in which he is held. As soldiers, let us do our duty in the field; contend for our legitimate rights, and not stain our honor by the sacrifice of integrity. And when present events, with all their deep and exciting interests, shall have pa.s.sed away, may the blush of shame never arise, by the remembrance of an unworthy though successful act, in the performance of which we were deceived by the belief that it was sanctioned by its object. I ended by saying that, should he undertake the enterprise, his short, bright career would close with an ignominious death.

"He replied, '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,' he continued, 'I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for 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 imperative!'

"He spoke with warmth and decision. I replied, 'That such are your wishes cannot be doubted. But is this the most effectual mode of carrying them into execution? In the progress of the war there will be ample opportunity to give your talents and your life, should it be so ordered, to the sacred cause to which we are pledged. You can bestow upon your country the richest benefits, and win for yourself the highest honours. Your exertions for her interests will be daily felt, while, by one fatal act, you crush forever the power and opportunity Heaven offers for her glory and your happiness.'

"I urged him for the love of country, for the love of kindred, to abandon an enterprise which would only end in the sacrifice of the dearest interests of both. He paused--then affectionately taking my hand, he said, 'I will reflect, and do nothing but what duty demands.'

He was absent from the army, and I feared he had gone to the British lines to execute his fatal purpose."

Just how soon after this conversation Captain Hale left camp on his perilous mission, cannot now be determined. We only know that it must have been early in September, during the first week or ten days. He proceeded with Sergeant Hempstead by the safest route, and reached Norwalk before finding a place to cross Long Island Sound.

Sergeant Hempstead alone has furnished the few details of Captain Hale's final preparations. He had decided to a.s.sume civilian's dress, probably that of an educated man seeking employment as tutor among the Americans still living in New York. Hempstead says he was dressed in a brown suit of citizen's clothes, with a round, broad-brimmed hat. On parting he gave Hempstead his private papers and letters, and his silver s...o...b..ckles, to take care of for him.

It is, we think, not an undue inference that the letters and private papers he left in Hempstead's care were all to be sent to his family.

These doubtless included personal letters to them, for no man such as we know Nathan Hale to have been would have faced a journey from which he might never return without some words of explanation, and possible farewell, to those he loved at home. There is one fact that all who believe in the sanct.i.ty of personal confidences and possible farewells will be glad to remember,--that not one private word from Nathan Hale to Alice Adams Ripley, or from her to him, has ever been exploited to satisfy the curiosity of those who have no right to share it.

Hempstead left Captain Hale, who, now fully committed to his hazardous quest, set forth on the armed sloop _Schuyler_ with Captain Pond--one of the captains in the 19th Regiment--in command, across the Sound to Long Island. When he landed Captain Hale said farewell to the last American friend he was to be with, so far as we have any record.

a.s.suming that he reached this point on or near the 15th of September, one or two other facts suggest themselves. It is known that the Declaration of Independence had been carried to the American camp as early as possible after its announcement in July, had been read to the troops a.s.sembled for that purpose, and had been received with unbounded enthusiasm. It is probable that both Colonel Knowlton, later in command of the Rangers, and Captain Hale, one of its officers, were present at that reading and joined in the huzzas. Singularly enough, neither one of these two men was a citizen of the United States for three months.

Two months later Colonel Knowlton fell in the battle of Harlem Heights, on September 16th, six days before Nathan Hale's execution. Knowlton's last words are said to have been, "I do not care for my life, if we do but win the day."

From the moment of his leaving New York, the mind of such a man as Nathan Hale must have had solemn foreshadowings of the possible result, of the tremendous risk he was facing. Men do not grow old by the pa.s.sing of years so much as by the endurance of great experiences, and in the few brief days that were left to Nathan Hale we know really nothing of his whereabouts, of what risks he ran, of how often he barely escaped recognition as a spy, where he slept, of any possible friends whom he may have encountered, or of any moment when his very life seemed to hang on the accidental glance of an enemy's eye.

Finally dawned the 21st of September. Hale had fully accomplished his mission.

There are conflicting accounts as to what occurred on the last evening of Nathan Hale's life, some going into minute details of occurrences that were a.s.sumed to have taken place. One with considerable plausibility says that, as the time had elapsed which he had expected to spend among the British (at the end of which time a boat was to be sent across the Sound for him), Hale, having finished his quest, had entered a tavern kept by a certain widow Chichester. She was a stanch friend of the Tories, and her house was the constant resort of Tories and British men and officers. While Hale was sitting in the tavern, apparently at his ease among the men there a.s.sembled, some one pa.s.sed him whose face he thought familiar,--a man who glanced at him sharply and then pa.s.sed from the room. Later it was said to have been his own cousin who betrayed him. Fortunately, there is not a word of truth in the a.s.sertion.

Although Deacon Hale writes that his son was undoubtedly betrayed by some one, it appears to have been effectually disproved that he was betrayed by a relative--a cousin who, it is stated, had never seen him, and therefore could not have recognized him. A much more probable rumor is that he was recognized by a loyalist woman who might easily have seen him before the American army retreated farther north on the island, and been impressed by his personal appearance and by his prowess in kicking the football over the trees in the Bowery. This feat Hale is said to have performed.

The report goes on to say that a man suddenly entered saying that a boat was approaching, and that Hale, supposing this boat to have been sent for him, at once left the room and went to the sh.o.r.e. If there is any truth in this narrative, it is very possible that here Hale committed his one indiscretion. In his joy at seeing the friends who had been sent for him, he may have uttered words of such joyous welcome that the officer who heard them must have known that this was some one expecting a boat, and presumably a boat from the opposite sh.o.r.e. At all events, it is stated that Hale, seeing his mistake when several marines presented their guns, turned to fly, stopping only when told by the officer to stand or be shot. These events are said to have taken place at Huntington, Long Island, about forty miles from New York.

But more than a century after Hale's death a British Orderly Book was found, containing the statement, dated September 22d, 1776, that follows:

[Ill.u.s.tration: See footnote [2]]

[Footnote 2: A spy fm the Enemy (by his own full Confession) Apprehended Last night, was this day Executed at 11 o'clock in front of the Artilery Park.

From an Orderly Book of the British Guard. Reproduced from the original in possession of the New York Historical Society.]

This, with other knowledge obtained about the position of the ship by whose crew he was said to have been taken, gives reason for believing that the arrest was not made at Huntington by the crew of that ship, but in the city of New York. The order proves also that, once apprehended, he made not the slightest attempt at concealment, nor any effort to escape his doom. The information gained by Hale's brother Enoch in New York supports this belief as to his capture.

All that we actually know is, that he was captured while attempting to make his way back to his friends, and that this must have been the sharpest moment in his experience. Before it, he had hopes of escape; after his capture he knew that his doom was certain, and his splendid soul adapted itself quietly and bravely to the inevitable.

That fatal night--the night of the 21st of September--was in many respects the most terrible that New York has ever pa.s.sed through. A fire had broken out near the docks at two in the morning, and was spreading with fearful rapidity toward the upper part of the city, the blaze carried northward by a strong breeze. It looked at one time as if nothing could stop the conflagration, and that the whole city would be destroyed.

For a time the enemy believed that the Americans had deliberately set fire to their own city in order to expel the hated British. Later this was found to be untrue, as the fire proved to have started in a low drinking house where several coa.r.s.e fellows were carousing. The fire swept on, destroying more than five hundred houses, one fifth of all the buildings then in the city, and was stopped only near Barclay Street by a sudden sharp change in the wind, which blew the fire southward toward the already burning district.

Report says that the provost marshal was given authority by Howe to dispose summarily, without the delay of a trial, of any Americans found rushing about the burning buildings, a.s.suming, of course, that they were intent on the destruction of more buildings, rather than on the natural desire of saving what they could of their own property; and that as a result of this authority, more than one hapless householder was thrown into his own burning home.

Up to this point, the early or late evening of the 21st, there is more or less of unsolvable mystery in regard to Nathan Hale's movements; but from the memoirs of Captain William Hull, Nathan Hale's college friend and companion in arms, we have what appears to be unimpeachable evidence as to Hale's arrest and being brought to General Howe's headquarters. We quote from Captain Hull the information he received from an English officer through a flag of truce:

"I learned the melancholy particulars from this officer, who was present at Hale's execution and seemed touched by the circ.u.mstances attending it. He said that Captain Hale had pa.s.sed through their army, both of Long Island and [New] York Island. That he had procured sketches of the fortifications, and made memoranda of their number and different positions. When apprehended, he was taken before Sir William Howe, and these papers, found concealed about his person, betrayed his intentions.

He at once declared his name, his rank in the American army, and his object in coming within the British lines.

"Sir William Howe, without the form of a trial, gave orders for his execution the following morning. He was placed in the custody of the provost marshal. Captain Hale asked for a clergyman to attend him. His request was refused. He then asked for a Bible; that too was refused.

"'On the morning of his execution,' continued the officer, 'my station was near the fatal spot, and I requested the provost marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered; he was calm, and bore himself with gentle dignity. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him; he wrote two letters, one to his mother and one to a brother officer.

He was shortly summoned to the gallows. But a few persons were around him.'"

He was condemned to die in the early morning of the 22d, but in the confusion prevailing throughout the city on account of the spreading fire, at one time threatening the whole town, Provost Marshal Cunningham must have been that morning very fully occupied, and it was late in the forenoon before he completed his preparations for Hale's execution.

At eleven o'clock Cunningham was ready, and, as it proved, Nathan Hale was ready also. Quietly standing among the few who had gathered to see him die, and it is said in response to a taunt from Cunningham that if he had any confession to make now was the time to make it, Hale responded, glancing briefly at Cunningham and then calmly at the faces about him, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

For once in his life Cunningham must have been astounded. With no plea for mercy, no shrinking from the worst that Cunningham could do, this man, still almost a boy in years, had shown himself utterly beyond his power--had lifted himself forever from the doom of a victim to the grand estate of a victor. One sharp, brief struggle and Nathan Hale was free--dead, but victorious!

Indefinite as are most of the details, there are some unwritten points that may confidently be a.s.sumed.

That 22d of September was a Sabbath day, a day a.s.sociated in Nathan Hale's mind with religious observances; prayers at the family altar, readings of the Bible, and gatherings of his friends within church walls. Whether or not his family knew the dangerous quest on which he had ventured, he knew that he was not absent from their memories, and that the family were bearing him in their thoughts that Sabbath morning.

No other day could have made that a.s.surance so real to him, and this thought was probably one of his strongest earthly consolations and inspirations while he was awaiting the slow but relentless preparations for his death.

No wonder that he bore himself "calmly and with dignity," as Captain Montressor said of him. No wonder that he died bravely--seemingly without a tremor of soul. In his last words Nathan Hale, true and faithful in every relation and every act of his brief life, gave to his country more than his life, more than all the hopes he was relinquishing so freely for her sake. In one short, indomitable breath of patriotism, he uttered words that will be forgotten only when American history ceases to be read.

William Cunningham, Provost Marshal of the English forces in America, murderer and inhuman jailer, would have laughed to scorn the idea that any being, human or divine, could preserve Nathan Hale's last words for the inspiration of coming generations, yet a kindly British officer, Captain John Montressor, carried them to Hale's friends.

Cunningham has left a record of brutality unsurpa.s.sed in American history. He is himself said to have boasted that he had caused the death of two thousand American soldiers. We know that any reference to the prison ships in New York Harbor sets Cunningham before us as a cowardly murderer, starving men to death by depriving them of rations which the English supplied for them, and which he sold, pocketing the proceeds. He stands alone on a pedestal of infamy.

The letters that Hale had written and left, as he hoped, to be delivered to his friends, Cunningham ruthlessly destroyed, giving as his reason that "the rebels should not know that they had a man in their army who could die with so much firmness." Though Hale's letters were destroyed, the English officer, John Montressor, aide to General Howe--a gentleman in whose presence we may safely a.s.sume that Cunningham, cowardly as all brutal men are, had not dared to maltreat Nathan Hale as he was known to maltreat other prisoners--that very Sunday evening spoke of Hale's death to General Putnam and Captain Alexander Hamilton at the American outposts where he had been sent with a flag of truce by General Howe to arrange for an exchange of prisoners. More was learned when a flag of truce was sent two days later to the British lines by General Washington, in answer to the one on September 22. Two friends of Hale, Captain Hull and Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Webb, were among those who went with the flag.

Through these flags of truce--and perhaps others--were obtained all the positive knowledge that Hale's friends were ever able to secure; but the unvarnished story, told by Captain Montressor, gave all that was essential to reveal to his friends his manly att.i.tude when in the presence of General Howe, and his calmness and dignity when he was awaiting execution; while his last unpremeditated but immortal words, in reply to Cunningham's taunt, proved to all his friends that he had died as he had lived--a Christian patriot, and a hero.

We may suppose that Nathan Hale himself had not the remotest idea that anything concerning his death would ever be made known to his friends save that, detected as a spy, he had died as the penalty he had known would follow capture. The words spoken by Nathan Hale, as his last earthly thought, seem to prove that the thought, breathed from the depths of his fearless soul, shall live as long as pure patriotism thrills the souls of mortal men.