When morning came, Cunningham found his prisoner ready. While preparations were being made, a young officer, moved in spite of himself, allowed Hale to sit in his tent long enough to write brief letters to his parents and his friends. The letters were passed to Cunningham to be sent. He read them, and as he saw the noble spirit which breathed in every line, the wretch began to curse, and tore the letters into bits before the face of his victim. He said that the rebels should never know they had a man who could die with such firmness.
It was just before sunrise on a lovely Sabbath morning that Nathan Hale was led out to death. The gallows was the limb of an apple tree. Early as it was, a number of men and women had come to witness the execution.
| Statue of Nathan Hale, standing in City Hall Park in New York City |
"Give us your dying speech, you young rebel!" shouted the brutal Cunningham.
The young patriot, standing upon the fatal ladder, lifted his eyes toward heaven, and said, in a calm, clear voice, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
These were his last words. The women sobbed, and some of the men began to show signs of sympathy.
"Swing the rebel off!" cried Cunningham, in a voice hoarse with anger. The order was obeyed.
Half an hour later, the body of the patriot spy was buried, probably beneath the apple tree, but the grave was not marked, and the exact spot is now unknown. A British officer was sent, under a flag of truce, to tell Washington of the fate of his gallant young captain.
Thus died in the bloom of life, Captain Nathan Hale, the early martyr in the cause of our freedom. Gifted, educated, ambitious, he laid aside every thought of himself, and entered upon a service of the greatest risk to life and to honor, because Washington deemed it important to the sacred cause to which they had both given their best efforts.
"What was to have been your reward in case you succeeded?" asked Major Tallmadge, Hale's classmate, of the British spy, Major André, as his prisoner was being rowed across the Hudson River to be tried by court-martial.