Nathan Hale, whose famous career as America’s first spy lasted less than two weeks, emerges from the shadows as the subject of today’s #stampoftheday because on September 10, 1776 Hale volunteered to spy on British forces on Long Island that were preparing to attack American troops in Manhattan.
Hale, who is pictured on 1/2-cent issued in April 1925, was a Connecticut native who attended Yale College and worked as a teacher after he graduated. When the Revolutionary War began, he became an officer in the Connecticut militia. When the British left Boston in March 1776, Hale was among the many soldiers who went to defend Manhattan against an expected British attack. He led a successful effort to capture of a British supply vessel, which won him a place in Knowlton’s Rangers, an elite unit used for dangerous and crucial missions, including reconnaissance.
In late August, more than 30,000 British forces soundly defeated about 25,000 American forces in the Battle of Brooklyn. However, the bulk of the American forces were able to retreat across the East River to Manhattan. Desperate to know where that attack would occur, Washington asked the Rangers’ commander to select a man for a surveillance mission. Before he could pick anyone, the 21-year old Hale volunteered to be the first of many spies deployed by Washington, who, the Central Intelligence Agency has noted, “was more deeply involved in intelligence operations than any American general-in-chief until Dwight Eisenhower during World War II.”
On September 12, Hale was ferried across the Long Island Sound and slipped into the occupied town of Huntington where, posing as a schoolmaster, he began surveying British fortifications and encampments. On September 15 (before Hale could learn of and report their plans), the British attacked and took lower Manhattan (i.e. the area south of what is now Chambers Street, which is where settlement was concentrated). Washington retreated to the island’s north in Harlem Heights (what is now Morningside Heights). And on September 21, a quarter of the lower portion of Manhattan burned in a massive fire. Some blamed it on the rebels. While the idea had, in fact, been discussed, Washington and the Congress had rejected it and denied responsibility for it. In fact, some speculate that the fire was the work of British soldiers acting without orders.
Hale was captured by the British, probably on September 21. According to one account, Major Robert Rogers of the Queen’s Rangers recognized Hale and posed as a patriot to get Hale out himself as an American spy. According to other sources, Hale was turned over to the British by a loyalist cousin, Samuel Hale. Regardless, British General William Howe personally questioned Hale on the 21st. And when he found documents supporting the claim Hale was an American spy, he condemned Hale to death by hanging the next day. He spent the night before his hanging in a greenhouse and his captures supposedly rejected his requests to be given a Bible to read and to meet with a clergyman.
According accounts that British officers supposedly passed on to American officers, Hale, whose career as a spy last less than two weeks, was remarkably calm and, before he was hanged, made a speech in which he is alleged to have said, “I regret that I have but one life to give my country.” Hale may well have drawn the line from a play by Cato, who wrote: “How beautiful is death, when earn’d by virtue! Who would not be that youth? What pity is it that we can die but once to serve our country.”
While there are no official records of what he said, Frederick MacKensie, a British officer who was present at the hanging, wrote in his diary that Hale “behaved with great composure and resolution, saying he thought it the duty of every good Officer, to obey any orders given him by his Commander-in-Chief; and desired the Spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.”
Be well, stay safe, behave with great composure and resolution, fight for justice and work for peace.