American spy in the Revolutionary War, executed by the British. A 1773 graduate of Yale, Hale taught school in New London and East Haddam, Conn., before enlisting in the Continental Army. He was a captain in Sept. 1776, when he volunteered to spy on the British for Gen. George Washington, an ardent believer in the importance of military intelligence.
Hale apparently sailed in a small boat from Connecticut to Long Island and, slipping behind British lines in Manhattan, identified himself as a schoolteacher, a natural cover. But he did not easily pass unnoticed, for he was tall and had scars on his face from a gunpowder explosion. He spent several days spying on the British before being captured while trying to return to American lines.
Historians do not agree on details of his mission, capture, and execution. He had no training in intelligence and readily admitted that he was a Continental Army officer. He may have been discovered because British officers found his notes and sketches hastily stuffed in a shoe. Or he may have been betrayed by a Tory cousin.
Whatever the circumstances of Hale's capture, Gen. Sir William Howe, commander in chief of British forces in North America, ordered Hale's execution, without benefit of a trial, the next day, Sept. 22, 1776. Denied the comfort of a clergyman or even a Bible, Hale stood on the scaffold and said brave words that have come down through the years in two versions: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" or "I only regret that I have one life to give for my country." (Some historians believe the last words were inspired by lines from Joseph Addison's 1713 play Cato: "What pity is it/That we can die but once to serve our country!")
Hale's last words, revealed years later by a British officer, were reportedly suppressed, and his last letters destroyed, because the British did not want to make a martyr of him. But he did become an enduring hero.
In 1914 a statue of Nathan Hale was placed on the Yale campus. The likeness was imaginary, for no portrait of Hale existed. The statue portrays a handsome young rebel, noose around his neck, hands tied behind him. A copy of the statue, erected in 1973, stands near the entrance of the headquarters of the CIA in Langley, Va. In 1985 Connecticut's General Assembly made Hale the state's official hero.
