But One Life...
Today, September 22, happens to have been the anniversary of the execution of Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary patriot captured behind enemy lines in New York by the British on a Saturday night in 1776 and hanged as a spy the following morning.
In the late 1950s, my parents spent a modest honeymoon trip traveling through New England, staying the first night at an inn in Coventry, Connecticut. In Coventry, they happened on the farmstead of the Hale family, preserved by an historic trust. Later, on one of many summer history trips we took as a family, they introduced us to the Hale Homestead, maintained by the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society in picturesque dignity. The place is somber, serene, beautiful and inspiring.
Nathan Hale was by all accounts a gifted, gallant, attractive and gentle soul. Son of a deacon, one of twelve children, he was serious and studious. Accepted to Yale College at the age of fourteen, he began his studies there along with an older brother, Enoch. Nathan distinguished himself, graduating at age eighteen with the intention of devoting his life to teaching and scholarship.
Indeed, Nathan worked as a small-town schoolteacher for the two turbulent years after graduation and before duty called him to service in the Continental Army. He was commissioned as a lieutenant.
General Washington and others were evidently much impressed by the young officer; later, newly promoted to captain, Hale was inducted into the Revolution's first intelligence unit, Knowlton's Rangers, and soon volunteered for a singular and perilous fact-finding mission behind the British lines. New York lay in British hands, and good intelligence was sorely needed were there to be any hope of the new United States' retaking of the city.
Nathan traveled in the guise of an itinerant Dutch schoolmaster; this incognito, barely departing from fact, nonetheless sealed his fate. Captured not in uniform but in civilian Dutch homsepun (and with his Yale diploma on his person), he lied about neither his identity nor his mission. However, after brief interrogation, Hale was sentenced without actual trial to death on the morrow on charges of espionage.
No one knows the precise location of Hale's overnight incarceration, nor the place of either his hanging or subsequent burial. At least two plaques have been erected on the facades of buildings on Manhattan's upper east side to mark a likely location for the gallows where his body would remain for three days. The capture and execution were not at first widely publicized. Unsubstantiated rumor of his death did not reach Nathan’s family until eight days after the event. Brother Enoch had to travel to New York for grim confirmation.
Yet, for all the physical obscurity into which death placed him, Hale's poise, valor and manliness in facing death so impressed British officers who witnessed it that his final words (possibly inspired by Addison) have come down to us with a clarity and haunting trenchancy that place them forever alongside quotations from more literary revolutionaries like Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
Nathan Hale was twenty-one years old the Sunday morning he spoke those words, the final morning of his life.
The Revolution was a war fought between civilized adversaries who shared a larger, common culture. There were rules of war and principles of decency and humanity honored between them, in theory at least if not always on the field of action.
How different is the war in which we are engaged today.
Remembering Nathan Hale takes on a special relevance this September. Two Americans have been reported brutally beheaded in Iraq this week. The hellish spectacle of slaughtered schoolchildren in Beslan near the Chechen border is still raw in our minds.
Such times force the question of valor on us. Each would prefer, no doubt, that enemies as savage and unremitting as those now against us did not exist, but they do. Each might pray that there were some way of exempting himself or his loved ones from the struggle, leaving it to others; that choice is not given. Many will be spared direct casualty in this war; others will not. But more so than in any other war we might consider, this one affords a calculus of exclusion that is dark at best, uncertain, unperformable. Neither logistics nor combatant status, neutrality nor appeals to mercy can avail. The only choice of prayer left open is a prayer for valor – for the wisdom to stand on the right side of a fight and the willingness to sacrifice for it if need arises.
None are so naïve as to think that present death pays down future terror. The economy of valor does not so function; its fluctuations and values are of a very different and a higher order. It has sometimes been remarked that Nathan Hale is famous for a failed mission (New York remained occupied until well after Yorktown). Of any martyr the same could be mumbled. Such a perspective is bland, contingent, mundane. The truth, I think, is more sublime.
It is as Lincoln explicated at Gettysburg: fallen valor consecrates, clarifies and sharpens the resolve of those who survive. Nathan regretted he could make his sacrifice but once, yet he knew that others would make theirs after. It was thus one transaction in an ever-growing economy of right purposes, purchasing for future generations such as ours the strength to meet with valor the vicissitudes and struggles of a different time.
In the late 1950s, my parents spent a modest honeymoon trip traveling through New England, staying the first night at an inn in Coventry, Connecticut. In Coventry, they happened on the farmstead of the Hale family, preserved by an historic trust. Later, on one of many summer history trips we took as a family, they introduced us to the Hale Homestead, maintained by the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society in picturesque dignity. The place is somber, serene, beautiful and inspiring.
Nathan Hale was by all accounts a gifted, gallant, attractive and gentle soul. Son of a deacon, one of twelve children, he was serious and studious. Accepted to Yale College at the age of fourteen, he began his studies there along with an older brother, Enoch. Nathan distinguished himself, graduating at age eighteen with the intention of devoting his life to teaching and scholarship.
Indeed, Nathan worked as a small-town schoolteacher for the two turbulent years after graduation and before duty called him to service in the Continental Army. He was commissioned as a lieutenant.
General Washington and others were evidently much impressed by the young officer; later, newly promoted to captain, Hale was inducted into the Revolution's first intelligence unit, Knowlton's Rangers, and soon volunteered for a singular and perilous fact-finding mission behind the British lines. New York lay in British hands, and good intelligence was sorely needed were there to be any hope of the new United States' retaking of the city.
Nathan traveled in the guise of an itinerant Dutch schoolmaster; this incognito, barely departing from fact, nonetheless sealed his fate. Captured not in uniform but in civilian Dutch homsepun (and with his Yale diploma on his person), he lied about neither his identity nor his mission. However, after brief interrogation, Hale was sentenced without actual trial to death on the morrow on charges of espionage.
No one knows the precise location of Hale's overnight incarceration, nor the place of either his hanging or subsequent burial. At least two plaques have been erected on the facades of buildings on Manhattan's upper east side to mark a likely location for the gallows where his body would remain for three days. The capture and execution were not at first widely publicized. Unsubstantiated rumor of his death did not reach Nathan’s family until eight days after the event. Brother Enoch had to travel to New York for grim confirmation.
Yet, for all the physical obscurity into which death placed him, Hale's poise, valor and manliness in facing death so impressed British officers who witnessed it that his final words (possibly inspired by Addison) have come down to us with a clarity and haunting trenchancy that place them forever alongside quotations from more literary revolutionaries like Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
Nathan Hale was twenty-one years old the Sunday morning he spoke those words, the final morning of his life.
The Revolution was a war fought between civilized adversaries who shared a larger, common culture. There were rules of war and principles of decency and humanity honored between them, in theory at least if not always on the field of action.
How different is the war in which we are engaged today.
Remembering Nathan Hale takes on a special relevance this September. Two Americans have been reported brutally beheaded in Iraq this week. The hellish spectacle of slaughtered schoolchildren in Beslan near the Chechen border is still raw in our minds.
Such times force the question of valor on us. Each would prefer, no doubt, that enemies as savage and unremitting as those now against us did not exist, but they do. Each might pray that there were some way of exempting himself or his loved ones from the struggle, leaving it to others; that choice is not given. Many will be spared direct casualty in this war; others will not. But more so than in any other war we might consider, this one affords a calculus of exclusion that is dark at best, uncertain, unperformable. Neither logistics nor combatant status, neutrality nor appeals to mercy can avail. The only choice of prayer left open is a prayer for valor – for the wisdom to stand on the right side of a fight and the willingness to sacrifice for it if need arises.
None are so naïve as to think that present death pays down future terror. The economy of valor does not so function; its fluctuations and values are of a very different and a higher order. It has sometimes been remarked that Nathan Hale is famous for a failed mission (New York remained occupied until well after Yorktown). Of any martyr the same could be mumbled. Such a perspective is bland, contingent, mundane. The truth, I think, is more sublime.
It is as Lincoln explicated at Gettysburg: fallen valor consecrates, clarifies and sharpens the resolve of those who survive. Nathan regretted he could make his sacrifice but once, yet he knew that others would make theirs after. It was thus one transaction in an ever-growing economy of right purposes, purchasing for future generations such as ours the strength to meet with valor the vicissitudes and struggles of a different time.
posted by Chet G @ 10:06 PM
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