Asher Wright was the last surviving Patriot to have seen Nathan Hale alive, besides the infirmities of advanced age, he had been affected in his mind, ever since the melancholy death of the young Captain.
One evening in 1836, Asher had an eager family member scribble down his words. His young relation used whatever came to hand (a blank leaf in the book he had been reading, Hume’s History of England, as it happened) for he knew, he was listening to one of a diminishing band of brothers of the Revolutionary War.
Asher said, “When he left us, he told me he had to be absent a while, but …he could not deceive.”
He had marks [scars] on his forehead, so anybody would recognize him from having had [gun] powder flashed in his face.
In his boyhood, school mates sometimes bullied him about it, and tell him one day he would be hanged.” They were right.
Still, Nathan Hale, immortalized “Martyr-Spy of the Revolution,” wasn’t even supposed to have become a spy, in the 1st place.
“No soldiers, let alone officers, in Knowlton’s Rangers of Hale’s regiment wanted to take the ignoble job of secret agent, an occupation considered inappropriate for gentlemen, and one best suited for blackguards, cheats, and cowards. It was then, remembered Asher, that “Hale stood by and said, I will undertake the business.”
Nathan Hale was the great grandson of John Hale, aka “Reverend Hale”, who was the Puritan pastor during the Salem witch trials in 1692 and one of the most prominent and influential ministers associated with the trials, being noted as having initially supported the trials, though he later recanted claimed temporary insanity.
Nathan Hale was taught to revere magistrates and ministers, as God’s chosen servants. He was taught to observe each Sabbath, as if it were his final one on this earth.
He prayed thrice daily, attended church twice on Sundays, and was marked down for a clerical career which required a college education.
Hale evidently managed to have a good time, despite his mounting bills for living expenses, his father wrote to him “carefully mind your studies that your time be not lost.”
A year later, Hale Sr heard Nathan was not minding his studies as carefully as he ought, and anxiously urged him to “shun all vice, especially card-playing.”
(Yale students, if caught 3 times gambling, were expelled from the college.)
In March 1771, Nathan, and Nathan’s older brother Enoch (also attending Yale) and classmate Benjamin Tallmadge, were fined heavily (1 shilling and 5 pence) for breaking windows after a prolonged visit to a local tavern.
In the years before the Revolution, Yale was notorious for its politics, but upon graduation, Hale became a schoolmaster in East Haddam; Tallmadge taught in Wethersfield).
Hale was bored numb, mentally as well as physically, until he was introduced to Alice Adams, a pretty, vivacious thing, but she was about to be married off to a wealthy man, Elijah Ripley, considerably older than herself.
Fortunately for Hale, Mr. Ripley’s talents did not include longevity, and he died on December 26, 1774. Hale waited, decently, until her period of mourning was over, before launching his suit. Just a few months later the Revolution came to Connecticut.
The battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, galvanized young men into joining the colors—including 2 of Hale’s brothers.
Tallmadge, wrote to Nathan on July 4, 1775, : “I consider our country, a land flowing as it were with milk & honey, holding open her arms, & demanding assistance from all who can assist her in her sore distress.… [W]e all should be ready to step forth in the common cause.”
While Tallmadge would join the Continentals the following year, Hale went to the recruiting station just 2 days after that inspirational letter was written.
It was the same day the governor of Connecticut commissioned officers in the newly raised 7th Regiment.
Hale’s name is on the list as 1st lieutenant of the 3rd company, within 2 weeks, Hale was on the march. Hale was promoted to captain-lieutenant, and reenlisted for another contract of service for 1776, at a time when many refused to do so.
Hales regiment was renamed the “ 19th Foot of the United Colonies,” part of Washington’s effort to mold his ragtag militias into a professional volunteer force.
Hale had missed a great battle on June 17, when the newly arrived General William Howe, ran off the American militia.
Due to Howe’s multiple assaults, though eventually achieving his objective, proved abnormally costly in loss of his men’s lives.
In fact, Howe’s was the only one of his field staff, who remained unshot.
By the time Hale arrived, the excitement was over, and the 2 armies were in stalemate.
Life was pretty uneventful, even dull from all the effects good discipline breeds.
In his free time, he played checkers, watched the men wrestle (even placing a few bets on the burlier ones), drank wine at Brown’s Tavern, read whatever books came his way, and listened to chaplains give sermons.
Then July 9, during the evening roll call, they were advised “the declaration of the Congress, the United Colonies: FREE, SOVEREIGN, AND INDEPENDENT STATES, was published at the head of the respective brigades, in camp, and received with loud huzzahs.”
How long that independence would last, depended on the resilience of the Continentals
August 20, Hale wrote his last, hasty dispatch to his brother: “For about 6 or 8 days the enemy has been expected hourly … 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.”
Two days later, General and Admiral Howe—“Black Dick,” (the latter, was the commander’s brother) began ferrying their army to Long Island, with intention to storm the Brooklyn fortifications, cross the East River, conquer Manhattan, and crush the rebellion before Christmas.
Hale’s regiment was sent to Brooklyn, but did not assume front line positions- Washington’s front collapsed, by August 30, so he evacuated Brooklyn and withdrew to Manhattan, losing one island only to be trapped on another.
There was nothing they could do except leave, while they still had the chance.
Sooner or later, the British would come and Washington could not afford to have his army besieged in the city.
The decision was quickly made: The Americans would retreat north to Manhattan’s Harlem Heights, whose rocky slopes afforded useful cover for a last-ditch defense of the Revolution.
Washington and his commanders furiously debated about what to do with the abandoned city.
The New Englanders wanted to burn it, and leave the British with nothing but blackened ashes. To spend the approaching winter; the New Yorkers, sensibly enough, were reluctant to raze their own property, though General Nathaniel Greene, favored burning.
In a lengthy letter to Washington, he laid out the purely military justifications for doing so:
“The city and island of New York are no objects for Us.… Part of the army already has met with a defeat; the country is struck with a panic; any capital loss at this time may ruin the cause.… Two-thirds of the property of the city of New York and the suburbs belongs to the Tories. We have no very great reason to run considerable risk for its defence.… I would burn the city and suburbs”
September 11th, Washington informed Congress he was “ordering our stores away [so] that if an evacuation … becomes inevitable, which certainly must be the case, there may be as little to remove as possible.”
Washington at least, enjoyed a line of retreat into Connecticut or New Jersey should the fortunes of war turn against him, but his priority was to figure out the probable British line of attack -they could come from almost any direction.
Across the water, Washington could see the British busying themselves, but would they land in the city and advance up the island, or would they land to his north, and drive south, or would they do both and entrap him ?
Perhaps they would do neither and attempt an invasion midway up the island, then divide their forces and take New York, at the same time marching to Harlem.
Washington knew Howe was slow, but he was methodical, and it was a dead certainty he had something up his sleeve. Washington needed accurate and timely intelligence.
As early as July 14, General Hugh Mercer—Scotland born, a former apothecary from Virginia—regretfully informed Washington that he could find no one suitable to sneak into the British camp (though he did succeed 2 days later).
Five weeks later, General William Livingston—soon to resign his commission and become the governor of New Jersey—said “very providentially I sent a spy last night on Staten Island to obtain intelligence.… He has this moment returned in safety.”
The spy, was almost certainly Lawrence Mascoll (Washington’s warrant-book records a payment on August 23 for him “going into the enemy’s line to obtain information”), had visited an “informant” employed by Howe to carry “baggage” and had “heard the orders read and the generals talk.”
Mascoll brought back useful intelligence, such as the British army figures, the revelation that provisions were running very low, and news that the “Tories on the Island are very ill treated lately, so the inhabitants who at first were all pleased, would now be willing to poison them all!
They take from the Tories every thing they choose, and no one has any thing they can call their own.”
But Mascoll’s assertion that the next attack would fall on New Jersey (at Bergen Point, Elizabeth Town Point, and Perth Amboy) didn’t impress a skeptical Washington, he believed an imminent strike on Long Island was being prepared. Washington was right.
September 1, Washington ordered Generals William Heath, a former farmer (he had urged Washington not to abandon New York), and George Clinton (serving as a militia commander, but soon to become governor) to establish “a channel of information” on the Long Island side.
4 days later, Washington wrote anxiously, to Heath:
“As everything in a manner depends on intelligence of the enemy’s motions, I do most earnestly entreat you and Gen 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.… Much will depend on early intelligence, and meeting the enemy before they can in trench.”
Following orders, Clinton managed to get William Treadwell and Benjamin Ludlum, “to run every risk to gain the necessary intelligence.”
For good measure, he conceived a plan to kidnap two Tory neighbors of his, whom he thought might prove reluctant to talk … but never mind, Clinton assured Washington, “If I can catch them I’ll make them willing” Clinton “examined them” and sent intelligence to Washington, but their intel was of little use: It was not a successful mission.
During these early days of the intelligence war, Washington focused nearly exclusively on military intelligence—that is, tactical information on the enemy’s positions and movements— which he had, himself performed as a young officer during the French and Indian War.
He made no attempt to infiltrate and put an agent permanently behind enemy lines, to report back periodically.
Consequently, Washington’s agents were required to operate at night and return before dawn, or at most, spend just a few days out in the cold.
The Americans also commonly failed to provide any training or backup for their agents, which is partly why the success in getting over was impaired by their lack of expertise in knowing what to look for.
Hale—frustrated transferred to another regiment, one guaranteed some action: Knowlton’s Rangers, a new outfit trained for special scouting service.
Captain Hale was leading a company of Knowlton’s men to American positions in the north, at Harlem and Hell Gate, though in he saw no fighting.
It was clear, however, that Howe was planning to attack Manhattan in the very near future. Washington asked Knowlton to recruit a few spies from his men.
Hale, hearing Knowlton’s inquiries, sought his friend William Hull to discuss whether he should volunteer. Hull replied, he thought the business of spying a murky and unwholesome, adding that he thought Hale too open and frank to carry it off in any case.
He warned that he would die an ignominious death, he was right.
“I am fully sensible of the consequences of discovery and capture in such a situation,” said Hale. “But for a year I have been attached to the army, and have not rendered any material service.” Spying, he agreed, was not an honorable undertaking, but “if the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service its claims to perform that service are imperious.”
Washington had his man.
And now that man, according to the recollections of Hale’s sergeant, twice visited Washington to discuss his route, precautions, and cover story.
Washington’s previous attempts to gather intelligence by sending men through the “front door”—landing them directly in heavily fortified Brooklyn or on Staten Island—had all proved fruitless; Hale, this time, would sneak in through the back by making his way to Connecticut, crossing the Sound, and landing on Long Island behind (or to the east of) the British encampments in Brooklyn.
His intended destination, Huntington, Long Island, it was about 2 days’ unrushed travel to Brooklyn, plenty of time to observe the massive baggage trains trundling west, count the regiments mustering for a final attack, and see when they embarked on the fleet of transports, tenders, and men-of war congregating at Hell Gate.
Hale’s orders never stipulated him to travel to Manhattan, because Howe had not yet attacked the island. He was only to spy out Long Island and come home.
Accompanied by Sergeant Hempstead, Hale traveled first to Westchester and then Norwalk, Connecticut— Hale’s home ground and a place where he could easily pick up a ride across the Sound to Long Island.
In his pocket, Hale kept a letter from Washington directing captains to take Hale to anywhere he designated. Hale already knew whom he wanted for the task: Captain Charles Pond of Milford, Connecticut, a friend of his from the 19th Regiment.
Hempstead recalled, several decades later, at Norwalk, “Captain Hale 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 [i.e., New York] 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.”
Traversing the Sound had turned dangerous. Ruthless smugglers and gunrunners, for both sides or just for themselves, now abounded, and British patrols scouted for rebel privateers.
By dropping anchor at 4 a.m. the 2 privateers waited off Huntington, until inky blackness fell, then Hale was rowed ashore, and they raced home before the dawn revealed their presence.
The vessels had only a few miles’ head start over the Halifax, but that was more than enough to discourage any pursuit.
As the Halifax weighed anchor, one man aboard—his senses sharpened by decades as a
frontiersman, warrior, and ranger—suspected something fishy afoot.
Why had 2 Continental vessels appeared so close to an enemy-held shoreline and vanish before sunup?
Could they have dropped off something – or someone?
He resolved to keep lookout for anything untoward.
The man’s name was Robert Rogers, and he was a type killing gentleman.
Rogers was not averse to rough soldiering, during one of his missions, he and a partner tried to capture a Frenchman for interrogation, “but he refused to take quarter so we kill’d him and took of his scalp in plain sight of the fort.”.
He scouted and raided in all weather, from the mosquito-tortured summer to the freezing winters – when even the hardiest of 18th-century armies put aside their muskets.
Notorious for aggressively pursuing his enemies, as well as for Roger’s policy of recruiting Indians into his unit, to serve alongside the ruffians, Irish, and Spaniards.
There’s little doubt “Rogers’s Rangers” were a tough bunch.
Uniformed in coarse, woolen green jackets and canvas trousers, they wore brown leggings up their thighs and moccasins.
A day in the life of a Ranger could be a terrifying.
During one winter, his mission deep in the woods, Rogers and 74 men were ambushed by the French and Indian allies.
Low on ammunition, and heavily outnumbered Rangers heard the French “calling to us, and desiring us to accept of quarters, promising that we should be … used kindly.”
If they didn’t surrender soon, however, “they would cut us to pieces.” Rogers defiantly shouted back that he and his Rangers would be the ones doing the cutting.
After a firefight lasting 5 and a half hours, being nighttime, Rogers and hisofficers decided to carry off their wounded and vanish into the hinterland.
Unfortunately, they overlooked some of the wounded, including Private Thomas Brown, who found two other casualties, Captain Speakman and a soldier, Baker, left behind.
Brown crawled into the underbrush to hide, he saw an Indian scalp Speakman alive, and then kidnap Baker, who tried to commit suicide but was prevented.
Speakman, lying there with the back of his head peeled off, his brain exposed, and hisblood soaking into the snow, said Brown he “beg’d me for God’s sake! to give him a tomahawk, that he might put an end to his Life! but was refus’d him, because Brown didn’t was to compromise his position, so he told Speakman to pray with him for mercy, as he could not live many minutes, in that deplorable condition, on frozen ground, cover’d with snow. He desir’d, me to let his wife know, if I lived to get home the dreadful death he died.”
Brown was soon captured anyway and later saw Speakman’s head stuck on a pole, staring glassily out at the wilderness.
Baker was never heard from again.
Brown, however, did witness another Ranger stripped and tied to a stake by Indians, who thrust pine skewers into his flesh and set them alight.
As for Rogers, he got the rest of his broken men back to the fort with heavy losses, not unusual in the Rangers.
His friend, Captain Abercrombie, told Rogers “I am heartily sorry for Spikeman [sic] … as likewise for the men you have lost, but it is impossible to play at bowls without meeting each other, good night”, Rogers smiled and asked Hale to come dine with him the next day at his quarters.
Hale enthusiastically accepted: Traveling with such an amiable companion as Rogers to New York would be pleasanter than finding his own way there.
As for Rogers, after the French and Indian war he was locked up for drinking and debt after he went to England.
In 1775, newly into the Revolution, he arrived back in the colonies but, no one quite knew what to do with him, or what his intentions were.
General Gage, the British commander loathed him—it was a personal thing—ever since the French and Indian War, so Rogers’s pickings looked a little slim in Boston.
The Americans weren’t too hospitable, either.
On September 22, the Philadelphia Committee of Safety, suspecting Rogers as a retired British army major (which indeed he was), locked him up for a day. He was released only after he promised not to take up arms against Americans.
Still, Rogers strategy was to play both sides.
Rogers wanted information, and was willing to pay lavishly for it.
He had dozens of informers on Long Island and along the Connecticut coast willing to provide tip-offs about troop movements and naval activities.
So, when Nathan Hale slipped across the Sound in the company of Captain Pond late on the night of September 16, he was entering Rogers’s den.
The barely-prepared Hale could not have had a worse enemy than Rogers, who was a grizzled veteran of countless frontier battles and political schemes, and described as “subtil & deep as hell itself.”
Based on their information, Rogers suspected that an American spy drop occurred near Huntington.
He guessed the spy’s destination as Brooklyn, and on September 18 he landed with a party of his Rangers at Sands Point, mid-way to Brooklyn, to intercept the Rebel.
One of Rogers’s numerous informers in Norwalk noticed the presence of Pond’s Schuyler in port, as well as the arrival of 2 men, both army types, only 1 of whom departed quietly in the night with the sloop while the other, headed westwards back toward American lines.
Having also been alerted by a lookout on the Long Island side that two rebel vessels—one named Schuyler, Rogers shrewdly suspected that man was being transported across the Sound.
But he received the intelligence a little too late, which explains why he and his Rangers were aboard the warship Halifax when it nosed around Huntington a few hours after the Schuyler and Montgomery had hightailed it.
Rogers was forced aboard the Halifax all day. Hale, a Connecticut Yankee in the midst of King George’s army, must soon have heard that Howe had begun the invasion of Manhattan and that Washington was abandoning New York.
Instantly, the raison d’être (purpose) of his mission had vaporized. Should Howe succeed in storming the island and taking the city, he would drain Brooklyn of men and materiel and funnel them into Manhattan, thereby leaving Hale to spy on only the newly deserted fortifications and emptied barracks of Long Island.
All Hale could do is hasten to Brooklyn, gather whatever information he could along the way, and then try to reach American lines.
In his hurry, Hale got careless.
He spent too much time in the open and asked too many impertinent questions of the locals.
Worse still, he was an easy mark for the thousands of Tory refugees who had flooded into Long Island from Connecticut after being purged from their houses by vengeful Patriots.
Someone, perhaps someone sitting outside a tavern or riding by, may have noticed Hale ambling by, and it would not have taken too long for Rogers to elicit from his Ranger that some excited Connecticut refugee had recently spotted a known or suspected rebel-traitor wearing a brown summer suit and impersonating a New York schoolmaster.
Though Hale had a head start on him, Rogers not only knew the ground, but he also did not have to worry about enemy patrols slowing him down. Then again, since Hale was alone, he could blend into the crowd if he suspected he was being tailed.
Instead of disembarking at Huntington, then, Rogers, guessing that Hale would head west along the coastal road toward he city, planned to lie in wait to intercept him.
At 10 p.m. on Wednesday the eighteenth, according to the Halifax’s log, “the party of Rangers” disembarked at Sands Point—a spot midway between Huntington and Flushing—and set off to hunt their prey.
The next day, just as Rogers had supposed, Hale was scoped traveling along the coastal road. Rogers spent the next several hours watching the innocent from afar.
Was he an agent or not?
He almost certainly was, but spring the trap too early, and Hale could claim a case of mistaken identity, especially if no incriminating maps or notes were found on him. Rogers needed Hale to condemn himself.
All the next day, Rogers watched, and saw Hale scribbling notes whenever he saw a British detachment or passed a barracks. He now probably had enough to hang him, but he wanted to make the kill certain.
That night, a Friday, Hale took a room at a roadside tavern and was sitting alone at a table eating supper when Rogers “happened” to sit across from him.
Hale looked nervous, so Rogers made some small talk, remarking by the by on the recent battles.
Soon, the two men began chatting about the war and Rogers—playing the part of an American militiaman caught behind enemy lines—complained of being “detained on an island where the inhabitants sided with the British against the American Colonies.” Hale’s interest, of course, was piqued, and Rogers took the opportunity of intimating “that he himself was upon the business of spying out the inclination of the people and motion of the British troops.”
Rogers’s strategy, persuaded Hale that he had found a friend, and one who could be trusted with his secret.
Amid the tavern’s unsuspecting customers, they discreetly raised their glasses and toasted Congress, whereupon Hale confided everything about himself and his mission.
Rogers had hooked Hale, but hadn’t yet reeled him in; for that, he needed witnesses to his confession.
On Saturday afternoon, Hale arrived at Rogers’s tavern. Waiting with him were 3 or4 men—Rangers disguised as civilians—whom Rogers introduced as friends to the cause. Rogers ordered ales for them all and together they talked of the revolution, Hale’s undertaking, and his excitement at being reunited with his beloved Alice.
In the meantime, the rest of Rogers’s men had silently surrounded the inn.
At last, Rogers gave the signal and Hale, open mouthed and panicked, was seized and manacled. Accused by Rogers of being a spy, Hale pointlessly denied it, but as Rogers dragged him out of the tavern, several passersby pointed him out and said they knew him as being a Hale of Connecticut and a known rebel.
Hale was taken to Flushing—where the Rogers maintained a recruitment office—and bundled aboard Rogers’s private sloop for the hour-long voyage to Howe’s Manhattan headquarters. Rogers said little, if anything, to his captive.
For a bloodied warhorse like him, bagging this Hale, straight out of Yale with a year’s drill duty on his card, had been too easy.
Very late on Saturday night, Rogers unceremoniously deposited Hale at the Beekman Mansion at what is now 1st Avenue and 51st Street, but was then being used by General Howe.
Hale’s execution for espionage was a formality. Howe was in the midst of orchestrating a major battle campaign and had no time to conduct a full court-martial for espionage, even if one had been required.
The evidence was incontrovertible and entirely uncontroversial:
- Rogers had provided witnesses who attested to Hale’s declaration that he had been sent by Washington
- Hale had admitted that he was an officer in the Continental army
- Hale was captured in civilian clothes behind enemy lines
- Hale was carrying a sheaf of incriminating documents.
There was neither reason nor need for Howe to agonize over this spy.
After Howe, woke from his bed, had sleepily signed Hale’s death warrant, he was detained in the greenhouse under the guard of the provost marshal, 60 yr-old William Cunningham, a red-faced drunk and notorious bully unlikely to look upon traitors like Hale with regard for their welfare.
(Some months later he showed a captured American officer, Captain John Palsgrave Wyllys, his souvenir: Hale’s Yale diploma)
Cunningham would be hanged in London in 1791 for forgery.
On the scaffold he confessed to having caused 2,000 prisoners to die by starvation and general cruelty, such as slipping poison into the food of the annoying ones.
He sold their rations for his own profit.
Captain William Hull of the Continental Army was present and recalled the event:
“In a few days an officer came to our camp, under a flag of truce, and informed Hamilton, then a captain of artillery, but afterwards the aid of General Washington, that Captain Hale had been arrested within the British lines condemned as a spy, and executed that morning.
I learned the melancholy particulars from this officer, who was present at his execution and seemed touched by the circumstances attending it.
He said that Captain Hale had passed through their army, both of Long Island and 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, 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, who was a refugee and hardened to human suffering and every softening sentiment of the heart.
Captain Hale, alone, without sympathy or support, save that from above, on the near approach of death asked for a clergyman to attend him. It was refused. He then requested a Bible; that too was refused by his inhuman jailer.
‘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, in the consciousness of rectitude and high intentions.
He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him: he wrote two letters, one to his mother and one to a brother officer.’ He was shortly after summoned to the gallows.
But a few persons were around him, yet his, characteristic dying words were remembered.
He said, ‘I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.'” (it was a phrase, lifted Cato, Hale had been struck by Cato when at Yale, and that he and Tallmadge had talked excitedly of its brilliance.)
After breakfast, it was time. Hale’s destination was the artillery park, about a mile away,
next to the Dove Tavern.
Hale’s hands were tied behind his back, and he was outfitted with a coarse white gown trimmed with black—which would be used as a winding-sheet for his corpse—over his rumpled brown suit, plus a rough, woolen white cap, also black-trimmed.
A couple of guards led the way, and behind him a squad of redcoats marched with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets—in case the prisoner made a last-minute break for freedom (it occasionally happened, the spectacle of embarrassed guards chasing and tackling a condemned man was considered quite comical).
Accompanying the party was a cart loaded with rough pine boards for his coffin. At the site, the noose was swung over a rigid horizontal branch about 15 ft up, and Hale shakily climbed the ladder that would soon be kicked away for the drop.
Next to the tree there was a freshly dug grave awaiting. At the top of the ladder, Hale was permitted the traditional last words.
Later that day, a Howe aide wrote a terse, routine entry in the orderly book:
“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 Artillery Park.” Lynching was a tricky business.
If the knot was not properly placed at the side of a prisoner’s neck (under his jaw, actually) rather than at the nape, his head would be ripped off if he dropped too great a distance, which left an unsightly mess for the guards to clean up.
Conversely, if the drop was not sudden or long enough, the condemned man would be left jerking in the air as the rope strangled him. In those instances, a merciful hangman would pull on the victim’s legs before the audience started booing him for being so clumsy.
A perfect hanging would break the man’s neck instantly by severing his spinal cord, while leaving his head attached. In Hale’s case, his hangman was a former slave freed by the British who was unlikely to be familiar with the latest methods.
As underestimating the appropriate drop was much more common than overestimating it, and being pushed off a ladder was far less sudden than falling through a gallows trapdoor, it probably took Hale several agonizing minutes to die.
Hale’s body was left swinging for a few days, to set an example.
One British officer had a letter published in the Kentish Gazette on November 9 (but dated September 26) remarking,
“We hanged up a rebel spy the other day, and some soldiers got, out of a rebel gentleman’s
garden, a painted soldier on a board, and hung it along with the rebel; and wrote upon it,
General Washington, and I saw it yesterday beyond headquarters by the roadside.”
His corpse was thrown into the waiting grave soon after.
The first the Americans heard of Hale’s death was on the evening of the 22nd,
when Captain John Montressor, of the Engineer Corps and an aide-de-camp to General Howe, approached an outpost in northern Manhattan under a flag of truce.
His main business, however, did not concern Hale, but was to transport to Washington a letter from Howe offering an exchange of high-ranking prisoners.
Joseph Reed, Washington’s adjutant general, accompanied by General Israel Putnam and
Captain Alexander Hamilton, rode to meet him.
After passing over the letter, he casually added that one Nathan Hale, a captain, had been executed that morning.
The next day, without mentioning the Hale incident, Washington accepted the prisoner offer in a letter carried by Tench Tilghman, who was escorted by Colonel Samuel B. Webb and Captain William Hull, who had specifically requested permission to be part of the embassy after Hamilton had told him about Montressor’s information.
Montressor again confirmed, at Hull’s insistence, that Hale was dead at 21 yrs of age.
And that was that.
Hull was shaken, but few others wished to talk about the humiliating debacle, and no announcement was made to the army, for fear of undermining morale.
In any case, there were hundreds of other war dead to handle.
As part of the cover-up, his official listing in the Nineteenth Regiment’s casualty list was simple and sparse: “Nathan Hale —Capt—killed—22d September.”73
Privately, however, American commanders seethed, and wanted to exact revenge.