The Beekman Mansion.
Beekman's Greenhouse.
Captain Hale was taken in one of the boats of the Halifax to General Howe's headquarters, at the elegant mansion of James Beekman, at Mount Pleasant, as the high bank of the East River at Turtle Bay was called. The house was situated at (present) Fifty-first Street and First Avenue. It was then deserted by its stanch Whig owner. Around it were beautiful lawns and blooming gardens; and near it was a greenhouse filled with exotic shrubbery and plants.[4] In that greenhouse Hale was confined, under a strong guard, on Saturday night, the 21st of September. He had been taken before Howe, who, without trial, and upon the evidence found in his shoes, condemned him to be hanged early the next morning. Howe delivered him into the custody of William Cunningham, the notorious British provost-marshal, with orders to execute him before sunrise the next day.
This severity, nay, absolute inhumanity, was doubtless the result of great irritation of the minds of the British officers at that moment. They had looked upon the little city of New York, containing twenty thousand inhabitants, as a most comfortable place for their winter-quarters. On the very morning when Hale was arrested (at a little past midnight), a fearful conflagration was accidentally begun at a low tavern on the wharf near Whitehall Slip (now Staten Island Ferry). Swiftly the flames spread, and were not quenched until about five hundred buildings were consumed. The British believed, and so declared, that the fire was the work of Whig incendiaries, to deprive the army of comforts. The city was yet ablaze while Hale was lying in Beekman's greenhouse, awaiting his doom in the early morning.
When Hale was taken before Howe, he frankly acknowledged his rank and his purpose as a spy. He firmly but respectfully told of his success in getting information in the British camps, and expressed his regret that he had not been able to serve his country better. "I was present at this interview," wrote a British officer, "and I observed that the frankness, the manly bearing, and the evident disinterested patriotism of the handsome young prisoner, sensibly touched a tender chord of General Howe's nature; but the stern rules of war concerning such offenses would not allow him to exercise even pity."