When you hear the name Nathan Hale, you may recall words something like, ‘I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.’ Perhaps you remember that Hale was relatively young and an obviously poor spy. However, most Americans think of little else besides a vague sense of patriotism when thinking of Nathan Hale.
Nathan was born on 6 June 1755, on a farm in Coventry, Connecticut, approximately in the middle of a brood of a dozen children born to Elizabeth (Strong) and Richard Hale. His closest sibling was his brother, Enoch, who was nineteen months older. These two brothers were tutored by Reverend Joseph Huntington, though not all the Hale children shared their intellectual pursuits.
At ages fourteen and fifteen, Nathan and Enoch would already have learned their Virgil and Cicero from Reverend Huntington and would have read their New Testament in Greek. While this might have been impressive to their Coventry neighbors, it was the norm for erudite young men entering Yale. In fact, one who became a best friend of Nathan’s was Benjamin Tallmadge, who was so well prepared by his own minister father that he sometimes found himself bored enough to get into trouble.
Alongside Tallmadge, the Hale brothers broke windows on campus one evening, incurring an extra billing that had to be explained to their fathers. However, most of the time the boys were well behaved and hard working. They were members of the Linonia Society, a club for debate, rhetoric, and civil discourse. One can imagine their conversations as the current events of the day were leading down a path to war. Perhaps they discussed the Boston Massacre when it occurred and tried to discern whether it had been a riot or a firing line as they compared varied reports.
Nathan’s time as a schoolmaster did not last long. When shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, he left his position to become an officer in the New London artillery company. The summer of 1775 was spent drilling and recruiting before marching to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in September. Hale’s surviving army diary and letters reveal his disillusionment with army life and desire to do something that would make a real impact. The soldiers spent most of the winter of 1775-6 battling smallpox, hunger, and cold rather than the British.
During his time in the Continental Army, Nathan participated in a raid that successfully stole a British supply sloop and an attempt to set fire to another. However, most of his time was spent drilling and foraging for food. It was not the glorious experience he had been hoping for, so when the opportunity came to be of notable service, he grasped at it.
His friends and fellow officers did not believe that Nathan was well-suited to espionage. He was friendly, good-looking, and naturally trusting. He was intelligent but not cunning. Nothing they could say could change his mind. Nathan was determined to serve his country by sneaking onto Long Island and discovering the enemy’s next move.
The last words often attributed to Nathan Hale, ‘I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country,’ are paraphrased from Cato by Joseph Addison, a play that he likely read and discussed during his time at Yale. The Essex Journal ascribed another Cato paraphrase to Hale, reporting that he said, ‘If I had ten thousand lives, I would lay them all down.’ Whether Nathan said both or neither of these lines, British Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie, who witnessed Hale’s execution, recorded that he ‘behaved with great composure and resolution, saying he thought it the duty of every good officer to obey any orders given him by his Commander-in-Chief and desired the spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.’
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