Information was imperatively necessary to save us from destruction, and it could only be obtained by one skilled in military and scientific knowledge and a good draughtsman, a man of quick eye, cool head, tact, sagacity, and courage, and one whose judgment and fidelity could be trusted.  Washington applied to Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton, who summoned a conference of officers in the name of the commander-in-chief, and laid the matter before them.  No one was willing to undertake the dangerous and ignominious mission.  Knowlton was in despair, and late in the conference was repeating the necessity, when a young officer, pale from recent illness, entered the room and said, “I will undertake it.”  It was Captain Nathan Hale.  Everybody was astonished.  His friends besought him not to attempt it.  In vain.  Hale was under no illusion.  He silenced all remonstrances by saying that he thought he owed his country the accomplishment of an object so important and so much desired by the commander-in-chief, and he knew no way to obtain the information except by going into the enemy’s camp in disguise.  “I wish to be useful,” he said; “and every kind of service necessary for the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.  If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to the performance of that service are imperious.”

The tale is well known.  Hale crossed over from Norwalk to Huntington Cove on Long Island.  In the disguise of a schoolmaster, he penetrated the British lines and the city, made accurate drawings of the fortifications, and memoranda in Latin of all that he observed, which he concealed between the soles of his shoes, and returned to the point on the shore where he had first landed.  He expected to be met by a boat and to cross the Sound to Norwalk the next morning.  The next morning he was captured, no doubt by Tory treachery, and taken to Howe’s headquarters, the mansion of James Beekman, situated at (the present) Fiftieth Street and First Avenue.  That was on the 21st of September.  Without trial and upon the evidence found on his person, Howe condemned him to be hanged as a spy early next morning.  Indeed Hale made no attempt at defense.  He frankly owned his mission, and expressed regret that he could not serve his country better.  His open, manly bearing and high spirit commanded the respect of his captors.  Mercy he did not expect, and pity was not shown him.  The British were irritated by a conflagration which had that morning laid almost a third of the city in ashes, and which they attributed to incendiary efforts to deprive them of agreeable winter quarters.  Hale was at first locked up in the Beekman greenhouse.  Whether he remained there all night is not known, and the place of his execution has been disputed; but the best evidence seems to be that it took place on the farm of Colonel Rutger, on the west side, in the orchard in the vicinity of the present East Broadway and Market Street, and that he was hanged to the limb of an apple-tree.