As this list of college graduates and professional men is not extended beyond the year 1850, a little past the limit of a century after the marriage of Richard Hale and Elizabeth Strong, one is inclined to wonder whether any other farmer's family within that, or any other, period in American history, can show a more remarkable record.
One is impressed, too, most profoundly, by the realization that, although Elizabeth Strong Hale died so early, as lives are now measured,—she was only forty,—to few women in any land who have reached the appointed limit of human life have been given the remarkable power of leaving to so many descendants such warmth of feeling and such nobility of nature as passed through that century of her descendants.
CHAPTER XI
Asserted Betrayal of Nathan Hale
For some time after the death of Nathan Hale a report was circulated, and apparently substantiated, that he had been betrayed into the hands of the British by a Tory cousin. Ultimately this report was printed in a Newburyport (Massachusetts) newspaper of the day, and read by Mr. Samuel Hale of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This Mr. Hale was a prominent teacher and a strong friend of the American cause, and uncle both to Nathan Hale and to Samuel Hale, the cousin who was said to have betrayed Nathan.
Mr. Samuel Hale never for a moment believed the report, and set himself at once to disprove it. This appears to have been done in the most effectual way by the combined efforts of Mr. Samuel Hale and Deacon Hale, who furnished proof that the supposed betrayer of Nathan Hale had never visited in Deacon Hale's family, and, not being in his uncle's house when Nathan visited there, had never so much as seen Nathan Hale.
There were, of course, at the time, strong animosities existing between those who supported the British cause among the Americans, and the Americans who were opposing England. As at all such times, some members of each party were not only unjust but cruel to the other party; and in some respects this nephew of the teacher, Samuel Hale, and asserted betrayer of Nathan, paid very heavily for his loyalty to the English cause. We will let him tell his own story, only adding that when hostilities broke out he was a young and successful barrister practicing in Portsmouth, was married, and had one child.
Unswerving in his loyalty to the English cause, he was soon obliged to leave New Hampshire, and eventually to go into English territory. He wrote to his uncle Samuel, in whose family he had been reared, and later to his wife; neither letter is dated, but it is probable that when the latter was written he was in Nova Scotia. His letter to his uncle runs in part as follows:
"My affections as well as my allegiance are due to another nation. I love the British government with filial fondness. I have never been actuated by any political rancor towards the Americans. My conduct has always been fair, explicit, and open, and I may add, some of your people have found it humane at a time when affairs on our side wore the most flattering appearances. My veneration is as high, my friendship as warm, and my attachment as great as ever it was for many characters among you, though I have differed much from them in politics. In the justness of the reasoning which led to the principles that have guided me through life, I can suppose myself mistaken. The same thing may have been the case with my opponents. Our powers are so limited, our means of information so inadequate to the end, that common decency requires we should forgive each other when we have every reason to think that each has acted honestly.