Revolutionary Heroes, and Other Historical Papers | Page 5

dog."
Captain Hale joined the group of officers. He said to Colonel
Knowlton:
"I will undertake it."
Some of his best friends remonstrated. One of them, afterwards the
famous general William Hull, then a captain in Washington's army, has
recorded Hale's reply to his own attempt to dissuade him.
"I think," said Hale, "I owe to my country the accomplishment of an
object so important. I am fully sensible of the consequences of
discovery and capture in such a situation. But for a year I have been
attached to the army, and have not rendered any material service, while
receiving a compensation for which I make no return. I wish to be
useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good
becomes honorable by being necessary."
He spoke, as General Hull remembered, with earnestness and decision,
as one who had considered the matter well, and had made up his mind.
Having received his instructions, he traveled fifty miles along the
Sound as far as Norwalk in Connecticut. One who saw him there made
a very wise remark upon him, to the effect that he was "too
good-looking" to go as a spy. He could not deceive. "Some scrubby
fellow ought to have gone." At Norwalk he assumed the disguise of a
Dutch schoolmaster, putting on a suit of plain brown clothes, and a
round, broad-brimmed hat. He had no difficulty in crossing the Sound,
since he bore an order from General Washington which placed at his
disposal all the vessels belonging to Congress. For several days
everything appears to have gone well with him, and there is reason to
believe that he passed through the entire British army without detection
or even exciting suspicion.
Finding the British had crossed to New York, he followed them. He
made his way back to Long Island, and nearly reached the point
opposite Norwalk where he had originally landed. Rendered perhaps
too bold by success, he went into a well-known and popular tavern,
entered into conversation with the guests, and made himself very
agreeable. The tradition is that he made himself too agreeable. A man

present suspecting or knowing that he was not the character he had
assumed, quietly left the room, communicated his suspicions to the
captain of a British ship anchored near, who dispatched a boat's crew to
capture and bring on board the agreeable stranger. His true character
was immediately revealed. Drawings of some of the British works, with
notes in Latin, were found hidden in the soles of his shoes. Nor did he
attempt to deceive his captors, and the English captain, lamenting, as he
said, that "so fine a fellow had fallen into his power," sent him to New
York in one of his boats, and with him the fatal proofs that he was a
spy.
September twenty-first was the day on which he reached New
York--the day of the great fire which laid one-third of the little city in
ashes. From the time of his departure from General Washington's camp
to that of his return to New York was about fourteen days. He was
taken to General Howe's headquarters at the Beekman mansion, on the
East River, near the corner of the present Fifty-first Street and First
Avenue. It is a strange coincidence that this house to which he was
brought to be tried as a spy was the very one from which Major André
departed when he went to West Point. Tradition says that Captain Hale
was examined in a greenhouse which then stood in the garden of the
Beekman mansion.
Short was his trial, for he avowed at once his true character. The British
general signed an order to his provost-marshal directing him to receive
into his custody the prisoner convicted as a spy, and to see him hanged
by the neck "to-morrow morning at daybreak."
Terrible things are reported of the manner in which this noble prisoner,
this admirable gentleman and hero, was treated by his jailer and
executioner. There are savages in every large army, and it is possible
that this provost-marshal was one of them. It is said that he refused him
writing-materials, and afterwards, when Captain Hale had been
furnished them by others, destroyed before his face his last letters to his
mother and to the young lady to whom he was engaged to be married.
As those letters were never received this statement may be true. The
other alleged horrors of the execution it is safe to disregard, because we
know that it was conducted in the usual form and in the presence of
many spectators and a considerable body of troops. One fact shines out
from the distracting confusion of that morning, which will be cherished

to the latest posterity as a precious ingot of the moral treasure of the