** Anxious to know the exact condition and intentions of the British on Long Island, Washington called a council of officers, when it was determined to send a spy into their camp. Colonel Knowlton, who commanded a choice regiment called Congress's Own, was directed to select a competent man from his corps. Captain Nathan Hale, of Coventry, Connecticut, volunteered for the service, and, bearing instructions from Washington to the commanders of all-American armed vessels to convey him whithersoever he might desire to go, he crossed the Sound to Huntington (some say to Oyster Bay), and made his way to the British camp at Brooklyn and vicinity. There he made sketches and notes, and, unsuspected, returned to Huntington with valuable information. There he was recognized and exposed (tradition says by a Tory relative), and was taken immediately to Howe's head quarters at Beekman's house, at Turtle Bay. He was confined in the green house of the garden during the night of the twenty-first of September, and the next morning, without even the form of a regular trial, was delivered to Cunningham, the brutal provost marshal, to be executed as a spy. He was treated with great inhumanity by that monster. The services of a clergyman and the use of a Bible were denied him, and even the letters which he had been permitted by Howe to write to his mother and sisters during the night, were destroyed. He was hanged upon an apple-tree in Rutgers' Orchard, near the present intersection of East Broadway and Market Streets. His last words were, "I only regret that I have but one life to give to my country!" His body was buried beneath the gibbet-tree. The name of this youthful patriot martyr appears luminous upon the pages of our country's history, and the grateful citizens of his native town have erected a handsome monument to his memory there. I made the above sketch of the green-house a few days before it fell, with all the glories of the beautiful garden of the Beekman mansion, at the touch of the street commissioner, in July, 1852. Its locality is now in the center of Fifty-second Street, a little east of First Avenue. It was erected, with the mansion delineated on page 817, in 1764. I am indebted to the Honorable James W. Beekman, the present owner of the grounds, for a copy of a curious document preserved among the family papers. It is a memorandum, kept by the gardener of James Beekman (the original proprietor); during the war, showing the time that several British officers, in succession, made the house their head-quarters. The following is a copy, with the heading by the pen of Beekman: "At the undermentioned time my country seat was occupied by the following generals" [the gardener's report]: "General Howe commenced fifteenth of September, 1776—seven and a half months. Commissary Loring the first of May, 1777—one year and five months. General Clinton the twentieth of October, 1778—three years and six months. General Robison [Robertson] May the first, 1782—eleven and a half months. Mr. Beekman the sixteenth of April, 1783—two months. General Carleton the sixteenth of June, 1783, to the evacuation, is five months—in the whole, is seven years one and a half months."—For Hale's capture and death, see Onderdonk's Revolutionary Incidents, ii" 48, 53
Preparation to invade New York.—Revolutionary Fortifications on the north part of the Island.
heights of Harlem River, about ten miles from the city. Every muscle and implement was now put in vigorous action, and before the British had taken possession of the city the Americans were quite strongly intrenched. *
Howe now prepared to invade the island and take possession of the city of New York. Large detachments were sent in boats from Hallet's Point to occupy Buchanan's and Moutressor's (now Ward's and Randall's) Islands, at the mouth of the Harlem River, and early on Sunday morning the fifteenth.
Sir Henry Clinton, with four thousand men, crossed the river in flat bottomed boats from the mouth of Newtown Creek, and landed at Kip's Bay (foot of Thirty-fourth
* At Turtle Bay, Horn's Hook, Fort Washington and the heights in the vicinity, on the Hudson and Harlem Rivers, and near King's Bridge, traces of these fortifications may yet be seen. *
* The Americans cast up a redoubt at Turtle Bay, on the East River, between Forty-fourth and Forty sixth Streets; a breastwork at the Shot Tower, Fifty-fourth Street; another at the foot of Seventy-fourth Street; a third at the foot of Eighty-fifth, near Hell Gate Ferry; and a strong work called Thompson's Battery, upon Horn's Ilook (now a beautifully shaded grassy point), at Eighty-ninth Street. This redoubt commanded the mouth of Harlem River and the narrow channel at Hell Gate. They also built a small work upon Snake Hill (now Mount Morris, in Mount Morris Square), near Harlem, and a line of breastworks near the Harlem River, extending from One hundred and Thirty-sixth Street to Bussing's Point, near M'Comb's Dam. Upon each aide of "Harlem Cove," at Manhattanville, a battery was constructed (One hundred and Thirty-first and One hundred and Thirty-third Streets), and along the central hills whereon the Convent of the Sacred Heart stands with a line of works extending to One hundred and Fiftieth Street. These were small batteries, without connecting breast-works, and overlooked Harlem River. From near "The Grange" (the country residence of General Hamilton, yet standing), in the vicinity of One hundred and Fifty-first Street, was a line of intrenchments, with three batteries and abatis extending to the Hudson, a distance ot almost a mile. The batteries of this line were upon three eminences. Almost upon the line of One hundred and Sixty-first and One hundred and Sixty-second Streets, was another line, with three batteries and abatis. These formed the "double lines of intrenchments," mentioned in the histories. The quite prominent outlines of a redoubt on the lofty bank of the Harlem River, at the foot of One hundred and Fifty-sixth Street, were pointed out to me by Henry O'Reilly, Esq., who resides near. From this redoubt, down the steep hill to the cove where Colonel Stirling landed (see page 827), the old road is yet (1852) open and passable. From Colonel Morris's (Madame Jumel's) house was a line of shallow intrenchments to the North River, with a single battery upon the eminence above the residence of the late Mr. Audobon the ornithologist, a little north of Trinity Cemetery. Upon the high west bank of the Harlem, yet rough and wooded, were two breast works. These the British afterward strengthened, and called it Fort George. This was between One hundred and Ninety-second and One hundred and Ninety-sixth Streets. On the King's Bridge road below, at Two hundred and Sixth Street, a strong four-gun battery was erected.