Honest Tunis Bogart, a witness of Hale's execution, said:
"I have never been able to efface the scene of horror from my mind—it rises up to my imagination always." Ashar Wright, who was Hale's personal attendant, was so completely overwhelmed by his fate, that his understanding reeled from its throne, never to be fully reinstated.
There was such lamentation among relatives, friends, and brother officers, when his death was learned, as betokened how he had endeared himself to all. His memory has been quietly cherished in many hearts. And ever, as the tide of time rolls on, his fame increases—his star sails steadily up among the immortal crowd of illustrious dead.
A certain share of infamy attaches to Howe, on account of the barbarities of Hale's execution. He could and should have known that Cunningham was a devil, unfit for any earthly trust. He should, too, have observed the due formality of a court-martial, and he certainly should have taken care to have had the sentence executed with decency. Howe is deeply blameworthy for his lack of humanity, and for his unrestrained indulgence of such monsters as the Provost-Marshal. He stands convicted of a tolerance of demoniac cruelty, not only in this case, but in the prison-ships, and his general administration. There is something even more damning in being an ungenerous enemy, than an ungenerous friend. Let the disgrace which it fairly won, rest forever on the name of Howe.
As for that sweet Alice Adams, to whom Nathan Hale was engaged, the events of a long life, the transformation of four score and eight years, passed over her head. In life's extremity, when shadows came and went, and earth was receding dimly, the first loved name was the last word on her lips. Truth and love came back to her in old age and death; perhaps she saw him standing on the eternal shores awaiting to help her over—love, life and youth are immortal there—and calling to him, she passed away.
MRS. SLOCUMB AT MOORE'S CREEK.
Mary Slocumb was the noble-hearted wife of one of the bravest soldiers of the Southern army, and was a fair specimen of the heroic women whose influence was so sensibly felt in the Carolinas at the period when the Revolutionary storm was deluging that section with all the horrors of civil war. Lieutenant Slocumb, her husband, like many others whose patriotism would not allow them to remain at home in the enjoyment of ease and comfort, while their country called for the exertion of her sons to free her from the thraldom of a foreign tyrant, had attached himself to the regiment of Colonel Caswell, who, at the period of which we write, had collected his friends and the yeomen of the surrounding country, to give battle to Donald McDonald, and his Highlanders and Tories, then on their way to join Sir Henry Clinton on Cape Fear, after having escaped from Colonel Moore at Cross Creeks. In the battle of Moore's Creek, which followed, Lieutenant Slocumb and his detachment, by turning the flank of the enemy, secured the victory to the patriots, and captured a large portion of the loyal Highlanders, among whom was the brave McDonald himself. It was a hard fought and bloody battle, and Slocumb, in after years, delighted to relate the incidents of the obstinately contested field, among which none was so interesting as his meeting with his wife on his return from the pursuit of the defeated Tories. It seems that on the night after the departure of her husband and his detachment, Mrs. Slocumb had dreamed of seeing her husband's body, wrapped in his military cloak, lying upon the battle-field, surrounded with the dead and dying. So strong was the impression upon her mind, that she could sleep no more, and she determined to go to him. Telling her woman to look after her child, and merely saying that she could not sleep, and would ride down the road, she went to the stable, saddled her mare—as fleet a nag as ever traveled—and in a few moments was on her way after the little army, sixty miles distant. By the time she had ridden some ten miles, the night air had cooled her feverish excitement, and she was tempted to turn back, but the thought that her husband might be dead, or dying, urged her on, and when the first faint tints of morning illumined the east, she was thirty miles from home. At sunrise, she came upon a group of women and children, who had taken their station in the road to catch any tidings that might pass from the battle-field. Of these she inquired if the battle had been fought, but they could give her no information, and she rode on, following the well-marked trail of the troops.
About eight or nine o'clock she heard a sound like distant thunder. She stopped to listen; again it boomed in the distance, and she knew it must be cannon. The battle was then raging.
"What a fool!" thought she. "My husband could not be dead last night, and the battle only fighting now. Still, as I am so near, I will go on and see how they come out."
Every step now brought her nearer the field, and she soon heard the sound of the musketry and shouting. In a few moments she came out into the road below Moore's Creek bridge. A short distance from the road, under a cluster of trees, were lying perhaps twenty men. They were wounded.