Long before daybreak of a Christian Sabbath, Nathan Hale was marched to the place of execution, in the vicinity of (present) East Broadway and Market Street. He was escorted by a file of soldiers, and there delivered to the provost-marshal. The young commander of a British detachment lying near, told Captain William Hull that on Hale's arrival he requested Cunningham to allow him to sit in his (the officer's) marquee while waiting for the necessary preparations. The boon was granted. Hale requested the presence of a chaplain; it was denied. He asked for a Bible; it was refused. At the solicitation of the compassionate young officer in whose tent Hale sat, he was allowed to write brief letters to his mother, sisters, and the young maiden to whom he was betrothed;[5] but, when they were handed to the provost-marshal to cause them to be forwarded, that officer read them. He grew furious as he perceived the noble spirit which breathed in every sentence, and with coarse oaths and foul epithets he tore them into shreds before the face of his young victim. Hale gave Cunningham a withering glance of scorn, and then resumed his usual calmness and dignity of demeanor. Tho provost-marshal afterward said that he destroyed the epistles "that the rebels should never know that they had a man who could die with such firmness."

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Cunningham destroying Hale's Letters.

It was in the morning twilight of a beautiful September day that Hale was led out to execution. The gallows was the limb of an apple-tree in Colonel Rutgers's orchard.[6] Even at that early hour quite a large number of men and women had gathered to witness the sad scene. Cunningham watched every arrangement with evident satisfaction; and, when everything was ready for the last scene in the tragedy, he scoffingly demanded of his victim his "last dying speech and confession!"

The soul of the young martyr, patriot, and hero, who was standing upon the fatal ladder[7] with his eyes turned heavenward, was then in secret communion with his Maker, and his mortal ears seemed closed to earthly sounds. He did not notice the insulting words of the human fiend. A moment afterward he looked benignly upon the evidently sympathetic spectators, and with a calm, clear voice pronounced the last words uttered by him:

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country!"

The women wept; some of them sobbed audibly. The sublime and burning words of the victim about to be sacrificed upon the altar of liberty, and the visible tokens of sympathy among those who witnessed the scene, maddened the coarse-natured and malignant provost-marshal.[8] He cried out in a voice hoarse with anger, "Swing the rebel off!" and cursed the tearful women with foul imprecations, calling them rebels and harlots!

So ended, in an atmosphere of mingled Christian faith, fortitude, and hope, and of savage barbarism and brutality, the beautiful life-drama of Nathan Hale, the early martyr for the cause of human freedom in the grand struggle for the independence of our country. It is a cause for just reproach of our people that their history, poetry, oratory, and art have, for more than a century, neglected to erect a fitting memorial to his memory—either in the literature of the land he so loved that he freely gave his young life a sacrifice for its salvation from bondage, or in bronze or marble. Nowhere in our broad domain, stretching from sea to sea, teeming with almost sixty million freemen, is there even a mural tablet seen with the name of Nathan Hale upon it, excepting a small monument in his native town, overlooking the graves of his kindred, in an obscure church-yard, which was erected forty years ago.

The body of the martyr was laid in the earth near the spot where his spirit left it. A British officer was sent to acquaint Washington with his fate. A rude stone placed by the side of the grave of his father, in the burial-ground of the Congregational Church in his native town, for long years revealed to passers-by the fact that it was in commemoration of "Nathan Hale, Esq., a captain in the army of the United States, who was born June 6, 1755, received the first honors of Yale College, September, 1773," and "resigned his life a sacrifice to his country's liberty at New York, September 22, 1776, aged twenty-two." An entry of his death was made upon the town records of Coventry.

Late in November, 1837—sixty-one years after his sacrifice—the citizens of Coventry formed a "Hale Monument Association" for the purpose of raising funds for the erection of a suitable memorial to the memory of the young patriot. The association applied in vain to Congress for aid. By fairs, tea-parties, private dramatic performances, and other social appliances, carried on chiefly by the gentler sex, and a grant of twelve hundred dollars by the State of Connecticut, a sufficient sum was secured in 1846 to erect the desired monument.

At one of the fairs, a poem, addressed to "The Daughters of Freedom," and printed on white satin, was offered for sale, and was widely distributed. It contained the following verses:

"Ye come with hearts that oft have glowed
At his soul-stirring tale,
To wreath the deathless evergreen
Around the name of Hale.

"Here his memorial stone shall rise
In freedom's hallowed shade,
Prouder than AndrÉ's trophied tomb
'Mid mightiest monarchs laid."

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The Hale Monument at Coventry.

The Hale memorial stands upon elevated ground near the Congregational Church in South Coventry, and by the side of the old burial-ground in which repose the remains of his nearest kindred. Toward the north it overlooks the beautiful Lake Waugumbaug, in the pellucid waters of which Hale angled in his boyhood and early youth.

The monument was designed by Henry Austin, of New Haven, and was erected under the superintendence of Solomon Willard, the architect of the Bunker's Hill Monument. It was completed in the summer of 1846, at a cost of three thousand seven hundred and thirty-four dollars. The material is Quincy granite. Its form is seen in the engraving. The height is forty-five feet, and it is fourteen feet square at its base. The pedestal bears on its four sides the following inscriptions:

North side: "Captain Nathan Hale, 1776." West side: "Born at Coventry, June 6, 1755." East side: "Died at New York, September 22, 1776." South side: "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

The fate of young Hale produced universal sorrow in the Continental army and among the patriotic people. In the Whig newspapers of the day tributes to his worth as a man and a patriot appeared in both prose and verse.[9] During the War of 1812'-15, a little fort, erected upon Black Rock, at the entrance to New Haven Harbor, on the site of a smaller one, built during the Revolution, was named Fort Hale, the first monument of stone that commemorated him. It has long been in ruins. Then followed the simple structure built by his neighbors at Coventry. Brief notices of the martyr have been given from time to time in occasional poetic effusions and in oratory. Timothy Dwight, Hale's tutor at Yale College, and afterward president of that institution, wrote:

"Thus while fond Virtue wished in vain to save,
Hale, bright and generous, found a hapless grave;
With genius' living flame his bosom glowed,
And Science lured him to her sweet abode.
In Worth's fair path his feet adventured far,
The pride of peace, the rising hope of war;
In duty firm, in danger calm as even,
To friends unchanging, and sincere to Heaven.
How short his course, the prize how early won!
While weeping Friendship mourns her favorite gone."

I.W. Stuart, in his little biography of Hale,[10] has preserved fragments of several poetic effusions. A short time after Hale's death, an unknown personal friend of the martyr wrote a poem of one hundred and sixty lines, in which he described the personal appearance of the young soldier—tall and with "a beauteous face." Of his qualities of temper and conduct he wrote:

"Removed from envy, malice, pride, and strife,
He walked through goodness as he walked through life;
A kinder brother Nature never knew,
A child more duteous or a friend more true."

Of Hale's motives in becoming a spy he wrote:

"Hate of oppression's arbitrary plan,
The love of freedom, and the rights of man;
A strong desire to save from slavery's chain
The future millions of the Western main."

The poet follows him in his career until he enters upon his perilous mission under instructions from Washington. Of the final scene he wrote:

"Not Socrates or noble Russell died.
Or gentle Sidney, Britain's boast and pride,
Or gen'rous Moore, approached life's final goal,
With more composed, more firm and stable soul."

J.S. Babcock, of Coventry, wrote in the metre of Wolfe's "Sir John Moore":

"He fell in the spring of his early prime,
With his fair hopes all around him;
He died for his birth-land—a 'glorious crime'—
Ere the palm of his fame had crowned him.
"He fell in her darkness—he lived not to see
The noon of her risen glory;
But the name of the brave, in the hearts of the free,
Shall be twined in her deathless glory."

In a poem delivered before the Linonian Society of Yale College, at its centennial anniversary in 1853, a society of which Hale was a member, Francis M. Finch said, in allusion to the martyr:

"To drum-beat and heart-beat,
A soldier marches by;
There is color on his cheek,
There is courage in his eye;
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat
In a moment he must die.
"By starlight and moonlight
He seeks the Briton's camp;
He hears the rustling flag,
And that armÈd sentry's tramp;
And the starlight and moonlight
His silent wanderings lamp.
"With slow tread, and still tread,
He scans the tented-line;
And he counts the battery-guns
By the gaunt and shadowy pine;
And his slow tread and still tread
Gives no warning sign.
"The dark wave, the plumed wave,
It meets his eager glance,
And it sparkles 'neath the stars
Like the glimmer of a lance;
A dark wave, a plumed wave,
On an emerald expanse.

"With calm brow, steady brow,
He listens to his doom;
In his look there is no fear,
Nor a shadow trace of gloom;
And with calm brow and steady brow
He robes him for the tomb.
"In the long night, the still night,
He kneels upon the sod;
And the brutal guards withhold
E'en the solemn Word of God!
In the long night, the still night,
He walks where Christ hath trod!

"'Neath the blue morn, the sunny morn,
He dies upon the tree;
And he mourns that he can lose
But one life for Liberty;
And in the blue morn, the sunny morn
His spirit-wings are free!

"From fame-leaf and angel-leaf,
From monument and urn,
The sad of earth, the glad of heaven,
His tragic fate shall learn;
And on fame-leaf and angel-leaf
The name of Hale shall burn!"

At the dedication of a monument in 1853, erected on the spot near Tarrytown where AndrÉ was captured, the late Henry J. Raymond, in an address on the occasion, said:

"At an early stage of the Revolution, Nathan Hale, captain in the American army, which he had entered, abandoning brilliant prospects of professional distinction for the sole purpose of defending the liberties of his country—gifted, educated, ambitious—the equal of AndrÉ in talent, in worth, in amiable manners, and in every manly quality, and his superior in that final test of character—the motives by which his acts were prompted and his life was guided—laid aside every consideration personal to himself, and entered upon a service of infinite hazard to life and honor, because Washington deemed it important to the sacred cause to which both had been sacredly set apart. Like AndrÉ, he was found in the hostile camp; like him, though without trial, he was adjudged as a spy; and, like him, he was condemned to death.

"And here the likeness ends. No consoling word, no pitying or respectful look, cheered the dark hours of his doom. He was met with insult at every turn. The sacred consolations of the minister of God were denied him; the Bible was taken from him; with an excess of barbarity hard to be paralleled in civilized war, his dying letters of farewell to his mother and sisters were destroyed in his presence; and, uncheered by sympathy, mocked by brutal power, and attended only by that sense of duty, incorruptible, undefiled, which had ruled his life—finding a fit farewell in the serene and sublime regret that he had 'but one life to lose for his country'—he went forth to meet the great darkness of an ignominious death.

"The loving hearts of his early companions have erected a neat monument to his memory in his native town; but, beyond that little circle, where stands his name recorded? While the majesty of England, in the person of her sovereign, sent an embassy across the sea to solicit the remains of AndrÉ at the hands of his foes, that they might be enshrined in that sepulchre where she garners the relics of her mighty and renowned sons—

'Splendid in their ashes, pompous in the grave,'

the children of Washington have left the body of Hale to sleep in its unknown tomb, though it be on his native soil, unhonored by any outward observance, unmarked by any memorial stone. Monody, eulogy, monument of marble or of brass, and of letters more enduring than all, have in his own land and in ours given the name and fate of AndrÉ to the sorrowing remembrance of all time to come. American genius has celebrated his praises, has sung of his virtues, and exalted to heroic heights his prayer, manly but personal to himself, for choice in the manner of death—his dying challenge to all men to witness the courage with which he met his fate. But where, save on the cold page of history, stands the record of Hale? Where is the hymn that speaks to immortality, and tells of the added brightness and enhanced glory when his soul joined its noble host? And where sleep the American of Americans, that their hearts are not stirred to solemn rapture at the thought of the sublime love of country which buoyed him not alone 'above the fear of death,' but far beyond all thought of himself, of his fate and his fame, or of anything less than his country—and which shaped his dying breath into the sacred sentence which trembled at the last upon his quivering lip?"

These eloquent words have a deeper significance to-day than when they were uttered a generation ago. It is a just reproach to a nation of nearly sixty million freemen, rich and powerful beyond any other people on the globe, that the memory of Nathan Hale, their self-sacrificing benefactor in purpose, and a true and noble martyr in the cause of the liberty they enjoy, has been, until lately, absolutely neglected by them; that no "monody, eulogy, monument of marble or of brass," dedicated to him by the public voice, appears anywhere in our broad land. But there are now abundant promises that this reproach will be speedily removed. An earnest effort was begun by the "Daily Telegraph," a morning journal of New York city, late in 1885, to procure funds by half-dime or "nickel" subscriptions, sufficient to erect a suitable monument to the memory of Nathan Hale, in the city of New York, where he suffered martyrdom. There is also a project on foot for the erection of a statue of Hale in the Connecticut State Capitol at Hartford. For this purpose the State of Connecticut has appropriated five thousand dollars.

Let the conscience of our people, inspired by gratitude and patriotism, be fairly awakened to the propriety of the undertaking, and funds will speedily be forthcoming sufficient to erect a magnificent monument in memory of Nathan Hale, in the city where he died for his country. I recommend, as a portion of the inscription upon the monument, the subjoined epitaph, written fully thirty years ago, by George Gibbs, the ripe scholar and antiquary, who was at one time the librarian of the New York Historical Society:[11]

STRANGER, BENEATH THIS STONE
LIES THE DUST OF
A SPY,
WHO PERISHED UPON THE GIBBET;
YET
THE STORIED MARBLES OF THE GREAT,
THE SHRINES OF HEROES,
ENTOMBED NOT ONE MORE WORTHY OF
HONOR
THAN HIM WHO HERE
SLEEPS HIS LAST SLEEP.
NATIONS
BOW WITH REVERENCE BEFORE THE DUST
OF HIM WHO DIES
A GLORIOUS DEATH,
URGED ON BY THE SOUND OF THE
TRUMPET
AND THE SHOUTS OF
ADMIRING THOUSANDS.
BUT WHAT REVERENCE, WHAT HONOR,
IS NOT DUE TO ONE
WHO FOR HIS COUNTRY ENCOUNTERED
EVEN AN INFAMOUS DEATH,
SOOTHED BY NO SYMPATHY,
ANIMATED BY NO PRAISE!

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John AndrÉ