"To drum-beat and heart-beat
A soldier marches by;
There is color in his cheek,
There is courage in his eye,
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat
In a moment he must die."
The story of Nathan Hale is the story of a short life and a brave
death. Connecticut has written his name on her Roll of Honor--the
name of a man who was executed as a spy in the War of the
Revolution. He was born in Coventry, Tolland County, on the 6th
of June, 1755. His father, Deacon Richard Hale, who, as well as
his mother, Elizabeth Strong, was descended from the earliest
settlers of Massachusetts, had moved to Coventry, Connecticut,
and had bought a large farm there. The children were brought up
strictly, as they were in all New England families in those days,
and no doubt there was plenty of hard work for them on the farm,
but, as there were ten or twelve of them, we may be sure there
was plenty of play, too.
It is said that Nathan was not a strong child at first, but grew
vigorous with outdoor life; that "he was fond of running,
leaping, wrestling, firing at a mark, throwing, lifting, playing
ball," and used to tell the girls of Coventry he could do
anything but spin. Stories told of him say that when he was older
he could "put a hand on a fence as high as his head and clear it
easily at a bound"; and that the marks of "a leap which he made
upon the Green in New Haven were long preserved and pointed out."
One of his comrades in the army wrote of him, "His bodily agility
was remarkable. I have seen him follow a football and kick it
over the tops of the trees in the Bowery at New York (an
exercise which he was fond of)."
But he was fond of study, as well as of play, and he must have
done well at the Coventry School, for his parents determined to
send him to college. He was fitted for Yale by the minister in
Coventry, as there were then no preparatory schools such as we
have now. When he was fourteen he entered Yale College at New
Haven with his brother Enoch, who was a year and a half older
than he. They were known in college as Hale Primus and Hale
Secundus.
At Yale Nathan studied well and took a good stand. He became,
too, one of the most popular men in his class. He made many
friends, and their letters to him show us how much they loved and
admired him. At one time he was president, or "chancellor" as it
was called, of the Linonia Debating Society; at another he was
its secretary, or "scribe," and the minutes which he kept then
can be seen now, in his own handwriting, in the Yale Library.
He was nearly six feet tall, broad-shouldered, wit blue eyes and
brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a manner that was both
attractive and dignified. A gentleman in New Haven who knew him
well said of him, "That man is a diamond of the first water and
calculated to excel in any station he assumes."
After he graduated in 1773, he taught school for a few months in
East Haddam. The country schools were very simple in those days.
There were few books; a Psalter and a spelling-book were the most
important ones used. There were no blackboards, and the teacher
set "copies" on paper, and read out the "sums" in arithmetic, and
often the whole school studied aloud. One of Nathan Hale's pupils
in East Haddam, who lived to be an old lady, said of him as a
teacher, "Everybody loved him, he was so sprightly, intelligent,
and kind and withal so handsome."
He was soon offered a better position in New London as the master
of a new school in which he was expected to teach Latin as well
as English. He wrote in one of his letters from New London:--
"I am happily situated here. I love my employment and find many
friends among strangers. I have a school of thirty-two boys, half
Latin, the rest English. In addition to this I have kept, during
the summer, a morning school, between the hours of five and
seven, of about twenty young ladies."
The schoolhouses in East Haddam and New London where Nathan Hale
taught have been restored and are kept now as memorials of him.
While he was teaching in New London the war with England broke
out. There was great excitement when the news came of the battle
of Lexington (April 19, 1775), and a public meeting was held at
which he is reported to have said, "Let us march immediately and
never lay down our arms until we obtain our independence." He
could not march immediately himself, for he was teaching school,
but when summer came he entered the army as a lieutenant, and was
soon made a captain. In September he went with some of the
Connecticut troops to join Washington's army which was besieging
Boston. The American flag was not adopted until the next year,
and as the colors appointed for his regiment, the Seventh
Connecticut, were blue, they marched away from New London under a
blue banner. His camp-basket, a powder-horn made by him, and his
army diary are still in existence, and can be seen in the rooms
of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford.