[3] On the day after Hale's departure, a strong British force crossed the East River and landed at Kip's Bay at the foot of (present) Thirty-fourth Street, drove off an American detachment stationed there, and formed a line almost across the island to Bloomingdale. On the 16th detachments of the two armies had a severe contest on Harlem Plains, in which the Americans were victorious, but at the cost of the life of the gallant Colonel Knowlton.
[4] I made a sketch of the Beekman mansion in 1849, and of the greenhouse in 1852, a few days before it was demolished, with all the glories of the garden, at Mount Pleasant; for, at the behest of the Street Commissioner, streets were opened through the whole Beekman domain. The site of the greenhouse was in the center of (present) Fifty-second Street, a little east of First Avenue. It was erected with the mansion in 1764. The mansion was occupied, during the war, as headquarters by Generals Howe, Clinton, and Robertson. It was the residence of the Brunswick General Riedesel and his family in the summer of 1780. General Carleton occupied it in 1783.
CHAPTER III.
Long before daybreak of a Christian Sabbath, Nathan Hale was marched to the place of execution, in the vicinity of (present) East Broadway and Market Street. He was escorted by a file of soldiers, and there delivered to the provost-marshal. The young commander of a British detachment lying near, told Captain William Hull that on Hale's arrival he requested Cunningham to allow him to sit in his (the officer's) marquee while waiting for the necessary preparations. The boon was granted. Hale requested the presence of a chaplain; it was denied. He asked for a Bible; it was refused. At the solicitation of the compassionate young officer in whose tent Hale sat, he was allowed to write brief letters to his mother, sisters, and the young maiden to whom he was betrothed;[5] but, when they were handed to the provost-marshal to cause them to be forwarded, that officer read them. He grew furious as he perceived the noble spirit which breathed in every sentence, and with coarse oaths and foul epithets he tore them into shreds before the face of his young victim. Hale gave Cunningham a withering glance of scorn, and then resumed his usual calmness and dignity of demeanor. Tho provost-marshal afterward said that he destroyed the epistles "that the rebels should never know that they had a man who could die with such firmness."
Cunningham destroying Hale's Letters.
It was in the morning twilight of a beautiful September day that Hale was led out to execution. The gallows was the limb of an apple-tree in Colonel Rutgers's orchard.[6] Even at that early hour quite a large number of men and women had gathered to witness the sad scene. Cunningham watched every arrangement with evident satisfaction; and, when everything was ready for the last scene in the tragedy, he scoffingly demanded of his victim his "last dying speech and confession!"
The soul of the young martyr, patriot, and hero, who was standing upon the fatal ladder[7] with his eyes turned heavenward, was then in secret communion with his Maker, and his mortal ears seemed closed to earthly sounds. He did not notice the insulting words of the human fiend. A moment afterward he looked benignly upon the evidently sympathetic spectators, and with a calm, clear voice pronounced the last words uttered by him: