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After his unit was incorporated into the Continental
Army, Hale participated in the siege of Boston and was promoted
to Captain on Jan. 1, 1776. After the British evacuated Boston
in March, the American Army moved to New York to secure its defenses
against Gen. William Howe's anticipated
invasion. There Lt. Col. Thomas Knowlton selected Hale as a captain
for his company of Rangers.
Following the American defeat at Brooklyn Heights
(August 27) and retreat to Manhattan (August 29–30), Gen. George Washington desperately needed
information about British plans and strength, and he asked Knowlton
to find a volunteer officer who would return to Long Island in
disguise to gather intelligence. Hale was the only volunteer
for this dangerous assignment. Untrained in intelligence, equipped
with neither code nor cipher, he made his way through Connecticut
to Long Island, claiming to be a schoolmaster and carrying his
Yale diploma.
Within a few days after Hale reached the British lines,
Howe had forced the Continental Army
to the northern reaches of Manhattan, so that whatever information
Hale had gathered about the enemy on Long Island was of little
immediate value. Nevertheless, he followed the British Army to
Manhattan, where he was captured on the night of September 21.
The intelligence reports he was carrying were enough to doom
him, but he readily admitted his office and mission. General
Howe ordered him, without court-martial, to be hanged the next
morning.
The story of Nathan Hale's execution on Sept. 22,
1776, became part of the patriotic American Revolutionary epic,
including later reports by witnesses of his speech before the
gallows. Paraphrasing lines from Addison's Cato, Hale ended his
speech with the words: “I only
regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” |
Nathan
Hale