Nathan Hale

Nathan Hale was born in Coventry, Connecticut in 1755.  He graduated with first-class honors in 1773 from Yale College at age 18 and became a teacher.

After the Revolutionary War began in 1775, Hale joined a Connecticut militia unit which supported independence from England.  He was elected first lieutenant within five months.

In the spring of 1776, the Continental Army moved to Manhattan to defend New York City against the anticipated British attack. In August, the British soundly defeated the Continentals in the Battle of Long Island via a flanking move from Staten Island across Brooklyn.

General George Washington was desperate to determine the location of the imminent British invasion of Manhattan.  To that end, Washington called for a spy behind enemy lines.

Hale volunteered on September 8, 1776 to go behind enemy lines and report on British troop movements, which he knew was an act of spying, punishable by death. Hale planned to disguise himself as a Dutch schoolteacher looking for work, though he did not travel under an assumed name and reportedly carried with him his Yale diploma bearing his real name.

While Hale was undercover, New York City (then the area at the southern tip of Manhattan, mostly south of what is now Chambers Street) fell to British forces on September 15, and Washington was forced to retreat to the island's north in Harlem Heights (what is now Morningside Heights).

Major Robert Rogers of the Queen's Rangers saw Hale in a tavern and recognized him. After luring Hale into betraying his allegiance by pretending to be a Patriot himself, Rogers and his Rangers apprehended Hale near Flushing Bay in Queens, New York.

On the morning of September 22, 1776 (248 years ago), Hale was marched along Post Road to the Park of Artillery, which was next to a public house called the Dove Tavern (at modern-day 66th Street and Third Avenue), and hanged.  He was 21 years old.  It has traditionally been reported that his last words, either entirely or in part, were: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."