Nathan Hale Gave His Life for America. 250 Years Later, We Should Remember Why

At noon on September 22, a small ceremony will take place at the foot of a bronze statue in Manhattan’s City Hall Park. A color guard will stand at attention, a wreath will be laid and most New Yorkers walking by probably will not notice.

They should.

The statue is of Nathan Hale, one of America’s first spies. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the British hanged him. He was 21 years old.

Hale hardly seemed destined for spy work. He was a Yale graduate, class of 1773, and a schoolteacher from Coventry, Connecticut – tall, fair and, by contemporary accounts, somewhat guileless.

After the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Hale joined a Connecticut regiment. In the summer of 1776, he served with Knowlton’s Rangers, an elite reconnaissance unit organized under George Washington after the American defeat on Long Island.

Washington desperately needed intelligence about British troop strength and positions in New York. He asked for a volunteer to go behind enemy lines.