“For the ruthless shall come to nothing and the scoffer cease, and all who watch to do evil shall be cut off, who by a word make a man out to be an offender, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate, and with an empty plea turn aside him who is in the right.” —Isaiah 29: 20-21

Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, Died for Irish Freedom, October 25, 1920

ne of the first, most harrowing guerrilla wars of its time was witnessed in the early part of the last century—that of Ireland’s fight to break away from her long occupation by Great Britain. She did this by any means possible, and the incentives were grossly oppressive indeed. Her free press had been abolished, her native language outlawed, her parliament dissolved, and her citizenry kept under martial law. In the midst of such calamitous times, Terence MacSwiney, Irish writer, poet and Republican activist, was elected Lord Mayor of Cork City in the south of the country. He was elected not only by the ballot box but with the blood of his predecessor, Tomás Mac Curtain.

Terence MacSwiney (1879-1920) in his official robes as Lord Mayor of Cork City, Ireland

Mac Curtain had been Cork City’s first mayor to be elected by running on a Republican ticket, and he had won it despite the continual suppression of the party’s platform by British authorities. In reprisal for his success, Mac Curtain was gunned down in his own bedroom at dawn by a squad of masked men—later revealed to be Crown Forces in disguise. They had burst into Mac Curtain’s home and fired point-blank into the sleeping mayor as his wife and children cowered nearby. Due to the enforced curfew and martial law, his panicked children risked their lives by running to fetch the doctor for their mortally wounded father. Mac Curtain died in the arms of his pregnant wife who found the soulful courage to remind him “this is for Ireland, Tomás.” It was his thirty-sixth birthday.

Tomás Mac Curtain (1884-1920)

The gory warning cloaked in this assassination was clear: the citizenry of Cork should think twice before electing any more free thinkers. No trial followed; the British Parliamentary inquest blamed “masked and unknown men,” but bragging by local British officials for having orchestrated it fueled outrage. When the Mayor of nearby Limerick was similarly assassinated in front of his family a mere two months later, shockingly the British Parliament agreed it was a perturbing coincidence, but declined further inquiry.

A Sinn Féin election poster from 1918 describing the Irish sentiment towards England’s oppression and underrepresentation of the Irish in the English Parliament

Terence MacSwiney had been Mac Curtain’s close comrade and vice-mayor; he stepped into the role fearlessly when elected and vowed at Mac Curtain’s funeral: “We will not falter. The fight for Irish freedom is our sacred duty.” In a chamber still echoing with grief, he took the oath in March, 1920.

The British struck back swiftly. On August 12, 1920, MacSwiney was arrested at a Republican safehouse, papers in hand that damned him as a plotter of civil unrest. Dragged before a military court, he was tried by court martial despite his elected status, facing vague charges of sedition. “I am not afraid to die,” he told the judge, his voice steady as steel. “Whatever your government may do, I shall be free, alive or dead, within a month.”

A Sinn Féiner prison camp in Ireland during the 1919-1921 Irish War for Independence

He was shipped to London’s Brixton Prison for incarceration, making a mockery of the supposed justice system in place in his native land. There MacSwiney joined his fellow Irish Republican prisoners on hunger strike, with the aim of demanding Britain acknowledge him and his fellows as political prisoners. This was no new tactic for the Irish, and was met with no mercy at the hands of English guards. With MacSwiney being a duly elected Lord Mayor and the most high-profile striker at Brixton, he became an international celebrity, his emaciated features broadcast in newspapers from Dublin to Delhi. It was of the utmost importance for the British to break his spirit and force a retraction from him; the ordeal proved harrowing. Force-fed through tubes that tore his throat, MacSwiney endured convulsions and delirium, indignities and veiled threats towards the welfare of his wife and infant child. Undaunted herself by these threats, Muriel MacSwiney traveled to London with her baby daughter Máire, pleading for clemency at Westminster’s gates and joining the crowds that swelled outside Brixton Prison, chanting Gaelic hymns to encourage the strikers.

Terence MacSwiney and his devoted wife and political supporter Muriel, likely on the occasion of their marriage in 1917

Prison Brixton, London, England

A lifelong devotee of the Catholic faith, MacSwiney’s historic association of martyrdom as a blessed impetus for change was at odds with his fear of committing the “unabsolvable” sin of his religion—suicide. He wrote letters of explanation and resolve from Brixton, reasoning: “To die for Ireland is not to throw away life, but to give it purpose. We offer ourselves not to end our fight, but to ensure its triumph.”

The world watched in horror: labor unions in Britain appealed for clemency, Indian nationalists drew parallels to their own struggle, the Pope interceded but to no avail. President Woodrow Wilson sent an American Senator as envoy to Ireland to investigate the state of justice in the country. Even King George V personally appealed to Prime Minister Lloyd George’s cabinet to make an exception and release MacSwiney, but the government held firm, branding the prisoners as “republican murderers” unfit for mercy.

Terence MacSwiney on his deathbed

A crowd in Dublin gathers to pray for Terence MacSwiney

On this raw October morning in 1920, as fog clung to the walls of London’s Brixton Prison, Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, drew his final breath after 74 days kept as a political prisoner. At age forty-one, the poet-turned-revolutionary slipped away in the arms of his brother and a prison chaplain, his body a skeletal testament to an unyielding will. “It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer,” he had written years earlier in his treatise Principles of Freedom. MacSwiney’s death was no quiet surrender; it served as a lurid exclamation mark in Ireland’s gruesome War for Independence, a death that reverberated across the Atlantic. Pictures of MacSwiney’s beautiful widow clutching her infant child upon collecting her husband’s body circulated in papers across the globe, and incited outrage that shamed an empire.

Terence MacSwiney’s brother Seán at the funeral of Terence

The coffin of Terence MacSwiney lies in state at Cork City Hall, Cork, Ireland

In Dublin, trams halted, shops shuttered; in Cork, 100,000 mourned as his cortège wound through streets lined with black crepe. Yet it was across the Atlantic that his sacrifice kindled the fiercest flame. Irish America, with its millions of descendants nursing old grievances, erupted in solidarity. New York City declared a day of mourning on October 26; Broadway theaters dimmed their lights, factories sounded sirens, and at noon, every citizen paused in silence—a “city frozen in grief,” as the New York Times reported. Vigils blazed for weeks: in Boston’s Fenway Park, 50,000 gathered under torchlight, reciting the Rosary; Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral hosted masses where priests thundered against British “barbarism.” Funds poured in—over $1 million (a fortune then) for the Irish cause, funneled through the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland. In Pittsburgh, 5,000 crammed the Lyceum Theater on Halloween night, 1920, to hear eulogies for MacSwiney. Women’s leagues in Philadelphia sewed Sinn Féin flags; schoolchildren in San Francisco penned letters to Muriel MacSwiney, promising “we’ll fight with words until you win with guns.”

Muriel MacSwiney in 1920

Funeral procession of Terence MacSwiney in Cork

In New York, 200,000 people filled St. Patrick’s Cathedral to mourn him, the largest memorial service the city had seen up to that point. Muriel MacSwiney undertook an overseas voyage to America that December, and while professing she had no strength to do so, she nevertheless went when asked by leaders of the Irish Republican Party. MacSwiney’s sister Min traveled with her. The ladies were hosted by governor Al Smith, as well as given the chance to provide unofficial evidence regarding the dire situation in Ireland before Congressmen belonging to the American Commission on Irish Affairs. Muriel MacSwiney would then become the first woman to be awarded the Medal of Freedom from the City of New York.

Muriel MacSwiney (second from right, holding front sign) takes part in protests during a trip to America

Sinn Féin visits Downing Street, 1921

When MacSwiney’s body was finally released for burial after long political wrangling, it lay in state in London, then at Dublin’s City Hall before sailing home. Buried in his hometown of Cork amid a sea of green, MacSwiney left no grand monument—only a legacy of suffering transmuted into strength. “That we shall win our freedom I have no doubt,” he had mused in prison, “that we shall use it well I am not so certain.” His death hastened the Anglo-Irish Treaty which came about one year later, forcing Britain into peace talks and paving the way to an independent Irish Republic.

Prayer vigil outside the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations, July 1921

Image Credits: 1 Lord Mayor MacSwiney (wikipedia.org) 2 Tomás Mac Curtain (wikipedia.org) 3 1918 Poster (wikipedia.org) 4 Sinn Féiner Prisoners (wikipedia.org) 5 Terence and Muriel MacSwiney (wikipedia.org) 6 Brixton Prison (wikipedia.org) 7 Deathbed portrait (wikipedia.org) 8 Prayer vigil for MacSwiney(wikipedia.org) 9 Séan MacSwiney (wikipedia.org) 10 Lying in state (wikipedia.org) 11 Muriel in 1920 (wikipedia.org) 12 Funeral procession (wikipedia.org) 13 Muriel protesting (wikipedia.org) 14 Sinn Féin visits Downing Street (wikipedia.org) 15 Prayer vigil for Anglo-Irish Treaty (wikipedia.org)

“But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.” —Numbers 14:24

John Champe and the Plot to Kidnap
the American Judas, October 13, 1780

n October 13, in the year 1780, General Washington invited one of his cavalry commanders, Major Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, to his headquarters to discuss “a particular piece of business.” At this secretive meeting, Washington broached a topic that had rankled him greatly: the recent treason of Benedict Arnold and how to repay it.

Benedict Arnold (1741-1801)

Before his name became synonymous in America with treachery, Benedict Arnold had been a great patriot hero. He was the twice-wounded victor of Saratoga, one of Washington’s most reliable officers, and the one he entrusted with the defense of West Point. A self-pitying descent into vainglorious ambition, disgruntlement with the leadership of Congress, and the honeyed drip of his Tory wife’s persuasions to join the Royalist cause came to a despicable culmination when Arnold contacted the British general, Sir Henry Clinton, and offered to sell his post at West Point.

Sir Henry Clinton (1730-1795)

Benedict Arnold’s oath of allegiance to the United States of America, signed at Valley Forge, May 30, 1778

Benedict Arnold’s price for this treachery was £20,000 (approximately $3.5 million in today’s value) in return for the fortification of West Point and all its garrison. Additionally, Arnold sought a commission in the British Army and a pension. When Washington and his staff paid Arnold an impromptu visit at West Point during these duplicitous negotiations, Arnold contacted his British agent again and—not being satisfied with the extent of his grubby perfidy—told the British to increase the sum because he was now in a position to hand over Washington himself to the British.

The home occupied by Benedict Arnold while commander of West Point

This plot was foiled by sheer Providence, involving the stopping of Arnold’s British contact—a Major John Andre—by a squad of drunken Continental soldiers who originally only wished to rob the man, but who then discovered the damning maps and papers detailing the plot. These were forwarded with haste to Washington’s staff officers who set in motion a well-executed lockdown of West Point. But they did not act quickly enough to catch Arnold, who fled out of his literal back door and caught a boat headed up river. His charming wife—the remarkably shrewd Peggy Shippen Arnold—served as a decoy for his escape by pretending to descend into a fit of feminine hysterics and thus split the energies of Washington’s staff who sought to comfort her.

Peggy Shippen Arnold (1760-1804), wife of Benedict Arnold, with their daughter

The escape pf Benedict Arnold from West Point

Since the incident at West Point, Benedict Arnold had set himself up in British-occupied New York. He received the commission he craved and some of the stated wages for his betrayal. He was a despised character amongst the British, however, as no one likes a turncoat. Not being trusted by them with the command he sought after, he set himself up as “Spymaster General”, hoping to gain British approbation by ruthlessly ferreting out every brave patriot citizen informant who worked in Washington’s spy rings.

One of Benedict Arnold’s coded communications with the British while he was negotiating his attempt to surrender West Point. Lines of text written by his wife, Peggy, are interspersed with coded text (originally written in invisible ink) written by Arnold.

Enraged by Arnold’s past treachery and current persecution of these informants, Washington called Major Henry Lee to his tent on October 13, 1780 and proposed a laughably daring plot: they would kidnap Arnold and bring him back so that justice might be served. Could Lee find a man among his cavalry willing to embark on such a mission?

Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee III (1756-1818)

It took Lee a week to find two volunteers “to undertake the accomplishment of your Excellency’s wishes.” Interestingly, Lee omitted to mention to these volunteers that they were acting on Washington’s specific orders since, if they failed, the commander-in-chief’s name could not be linked to such an unorthodox mission. The first man was a sergeant in Lee’s regiment named John Champe. A tall Virginian in his early twenties, his taciturn nature and “total absence of cheerfulness” masked a “remarkable intelligence”, according to Lee.

His task would be to enter New York, somehow capture Arnold, and bundle him down to a waiting boat for removal to Patriot-held New Jersey. Modestly desirous of an officer’s commission, all Champe asked for in reward for his dangerous services was a promotion. The other volunteer, whose name was never revealed, would be Champe’s contact man in Newark, New Jersey, and Lee promised him “one hundred guineas, five hundred acres of land, and three negroes.”

Washington was most pleased at Champe’s public-spiritedness. He admitted himself reluctant to cast around for officers to undertake the business, which even he regarded as being a shade dishonorable. After inquiring into Champe’s details, in the strictest of confidences, Washington authorized the operation and approved the rewards Lee had arranged with “the conductors of this interesting business.” He made one stipulation: Arnold was to be brought in alive. If he were killed during the mission, the British would be quick to spin it as “ruffians being hired to assassinate him,” whereas Washington’s aim was “to make a public example of him.”

After these arrangements had been made, Lee summoned Sergeant Champe to his quarters and ordered him to desert to the enemy immediately. To ensure complete authenticity, Lee added that no help could be given to Champe during his flight; he would have to find his way to the British lines as if he were a real turncoat. The most Lee could offer was to delay pursuit for as long as he could if Champe’s absence was noted before the next morning.

With that, Champe collected his belongings (including the regiment’s orderly book, for added authenticity) and rode his horse out of camp at about 11 o’clock that night. He was given three guineas to cover his immediate expenses (Washington refused him any more, saying it would ring too many alarm bells) and the names of two known friendlies in New York.

No one stopped Champe’s leaving, but just half a mile out of camp, at a crossroads, a mounted Patriot patrol returning from duty issued a challenge. Champe kept silent, pulled up his hood, plunged his spurs into his steed’s flanks, and galloped past them. The patrol gave chase but their horses were tired and they soon quit. Unfortunately, the patrol belonged to Lee’s own regiment, and half an hour later a certain Captain Carnes briskly woke up Major Lee to tell him of the incident. Lee understood instantly it was Champe that they had seen and played dumb, forcing the captain to repeat his entire story, questioning tiny details, dismissing Captain Carnes’ belief that the mysterious rider, judging by his riding style, was a cavalryman and suggesting instead he was “a countryman” in a hurry.

Lee could see Captain Carnes wasn’t convinced, and finally was forced to direct him to muster every man and horse and see if any were missing. That would waste yet another hour, at least, Lee hoped. Sooner than he expected, Captain Carnes returned and declared that one, a Sergeant Champe, was gone. It had come to the point where to continue piddling would invite suspicion, and Lee called out the regiment to give pursuit, as would be expected in the context of a desertion.

A pursuit party was selected and Lee chose a young cornet named Middleton, whom he knew lacked Captain Carnes’ experience and rigor, to lead it. Lee thought him to be of a gentle enough disposition that he would not kill Champe outright were he to capture him. In his quarters with Middleton, Lee managed to waste ten minutes going over in tedious detail exactly which route he should take, which equipment he might need, and how many men he should bring. Finally, after waiting precious minutes for Lee to sign his orders and reiterate how Champe should be treated humanely, an impatient Middleton was allowed to go.

Champe, thanks to Lee’s intervention, had gained an hour’s head start, but by that point, it unexpectedly began to rain: not hard enough to prevent pursuit, but sufficient to leave tracks on the muddy roads. Lee’s men were dragoons, and none in the army knew better than they how to follow hoof-prints. Worse yet, the regiment had one farrier who used a single, peculiar pattern of horseshoe, which made their tracts distinct. Unlike his pursuers, Champe could not afford to gallop through the countryside. Aside from the risk of laming his horse, the place swarmed with colonial militiamen who might set off a hue and cry at the sight of a lone, be-cloaked horseman running at full pelt so late at night.

Therefore, by dawn, Champe was still several miles north of Bergen, New Jersey on a wide and open plain where he could be easily spotted. Behind him he could hear the faint clatter of hooves, and knew his pursuers were closing. Looking behind him, Champe was horrified to see several horsemen pausing at the crest of a hill half a mile away and signaling to their comrades that the quarry was near. Champe gave spur to his horse and he made for the bridge traversing the Hackensack River. Most of the pursuers, including their leader Middleton, were local men and knew the terrain far better than the man they pursued. Middleton split his forces in two, so as to trap Champe in a pincer at the bottom of the hill near the river’s crossing. Caught between two forces, Champe would be forced to surrender.

And yet, Middleton miscalculated Champe’s brazen daring. Seeing his intended path was blocked and the original plan to defect to Paulis Hook (a British fortress on the Jersey shore) was impossible, Champe instead plunged straight ahead into the town of Bergen itself. He tore down one paved street after another before taking the road leading to the Hudson River, not the one heading to Paulus Hook.

Seeing his miscalculation, Middleton gave chase. There were two British ships anchored a mile ahead of Champe on the Hudson, and he made for them. Behind him, also a mile away, were the pursuing cavalrymen. There was nothing for it but to lighten the horse’s load and make a break for it. After shrugging off his cloak and tossing away his scabbard, Champe reached the shore in quick time but lost valuable minutes trying to attract the crews’ attention by dismounting and waving his arms. By the time the crews noticed him, Middleton had closed the distance and was just two hundred yards away.

Sergeant Major John Champe (1752-1798) riding for his life to escape his own men and carry out Washington’s secret mission

No longer able to wait for a boat to bring him in, Champe, weighed down by full dragoon regalia, splashed through the marsh on the bank and plunged into the chilly river, determined to swim toward the vessels. As Middleton pulled up and cried out for Champe to surrender, marksmen aboard the ships opened fire. The Patriot dragoons fired back before being driven away. Friendly British hands reached down and hauled an exhausted Champe from the water. There was not a single one among them who doubted the credibility of a deserter with bullet holes on his coat.

He was taken into New York and brought before General Clinton, the man who had accepted Arnold into his ranks. Clinton was greatly impressed when he heard of the young sergeant’s adventure. Champe was only the second man ever to have deserted from Lee’s legion, a unit famed for its fidelity. Champe played along admirably, telling Clinton that Arnold’s defection would only be the first of many among the dispirited Americans. Clinton chatted with him for an hour, and he was particularly interested in knowing how fondly Washington was regarded by the troops, whether other senior officers seemed disaffected, and which measures might prompt large-scale desertions.

Once finished with his inquiries, Clinton recommended that Champe see Arnold, who was then busy raising a regiment of deserters and Tories. It was an unexpected offer, almost too fortuitous considering Champe’s real mission in New York, but one Champe could not refuse without causing great suspicion. General Arnold took an instant shine to the young man sent to abduct him, going so far as to make him a recruiting sergeant a day after he enlisted.

For several weeks, Champe paid close attention to his prey’s movements. Arnold’s house was situated on one of the city’s principal streets, which made it impossible to abduct him through the front door, but Champe noticed that Arnold had a habit of taking a midnight stroll in his back garden before going to bed. This garden bordered an obscure alley, a wooden fence separating the two. One night, Champe sneaked along the alley and loosened several slats to allow enough space for a man to pass through. At that point, he contacted one of the two incognitos provided by Lee and asked him to get a message across the Hudson to the Newark contact, whose task it was to tell Lee to have a boat and several dragoons waiting on a particular night on the Jersey shore. At a prearranged time, they were to row to a darkened, deserted Manhattan wharf and pick up Champe’s Arnold-sized “package.” Champe’s other New York contact would accompany Champe to the alley, and they would hide themselves in Arnold’s garden.

On the day Champe had chosen for the deed, he prepared his kit: a gag and a bar with which to bludgeon the general. The plan was to tackle Arnold, hit and silence him, push him through the fence, pull his hat down over his face, and hold him up with his arms sagging around their shoulders. To passersby, it would look like two friends taking their drunken friend home after a hard night. Once at the wharf, Arnold would be tied up and bundled into the boat, and Champe would make off with his fellow dragoons. The first face a groggy Arnold would have seen the next day would have been Washington’s vengeful one.

Benedict Arnold, however, was destined to be conspicuously spared from every attempt to bring him to account. Just as he had miraculously escaped being taken at West Point, he would do so again. The very evening that Champe was to kidnap the general, he discovered that Arnold had been suddenly transferred to new quarters to oversee the embarkation of his “American Legion” aboard naval transports, a result of General Clinton having issued emergency orders directing the legion to proceed to Virginia.

Champe, who was now a most unwilling part of that American Legion, was immediately confined to barracks with his fellows, and then marched to the docks to depart for the South. The only person being kidnapped, it seems, was Champe himself. The depth of his aggravation can only be imagined. Lee, meanwhile, had been impatiently waiting with his dragoons on the banks of the Hudson all night, and it was only a few days later that he realized that Champe would never be coming.

Months went by. Lee had no word of his man. Then, without any warning, a bedraggled, bearded Sergeant Champe appeared in Lee camp with a harrowing story to tell, but no Arnold to deliver.

It had come about that, after landing in his native Virginia, Champe had been obliged to fight against his compatriots to keep up the duplicitous front. Finding this existence insuperable and the likelihood of carrying out his mission increasingly futile, Champe had deserted Arnold’s Legion, for real this time. He hid out in the country, traveling only at night through Virginia and North Carolina to evade Loyalist sympathizers and British pursuers, until he had at last arrived back at his old regiment. Lee immediately called the regiment to muster and proceeded to narrate to their great astonishment the truth of Champe’s whereabouts, and that he had been acting under the commander-in-chief’s orders all along.

Then Lee took Champe to Washington, who, in place of the promised promotion, offered him a lavish bounty and a discharge from military service. Champe however, objected and pleaded vehemently with his General that he would like to rejoin his regiment, not at all too tired to see the war to its conclusion. Washington sagaciously counseled against any such notion: if Champe were to be taken prisoner by the British, he would inevitably be recognized and hung as a double agent. Forced to see the wisdom of this, Champe, his remarkable service done, bid farewell to his commanders and mounted the horse given to him by Washington. He went back to Loudoun County, Virginia, riding right out of our revolution’s narrative.

The last time anyone recorded seeing the mysterious Sergeant John Champe was sometime in the late 1780s when Angus Cameron, a Scottish captain in Arnold’s Legion, happened to get lost while traveling deep in the Loudoun County woods one summer night. A terrible storm rolled over him, and he spotted a cottage by the flash of the lightning—the first he had seen in many miles. The man of the house ushered him inside, a man strangely familiar to Cameron.

Cameron, it turns out, had been Champe’s old superior during his days in the Legion. “Sergeant Champe stood before me!”, Cameron later recalled, and his shock at seeing the audacious sergeant was not altogether pleasant. Champe was, after all, a two-time deserter. Cameron was an unarmed outsider hours away from help, and his host might not relish this blast from the past turning up unexpectedly. Cameron’s misgivings were, thankfully, misplaced. Champe remained the charmingly benign man he had always presented himself to be. “Welcome, welcome, Captain Cameron!” exclaimed Champe, upon recognizing the bedraggled guest he had opened his door to, “a thousand times welcome to my roof.”

Amongst the exuberant storytelling and good-natured argumentation of the night, Champe would assure Cameron that he had been “the only British officer of whose good opinion I was covetous”, owing to his kindly behavior toward him during the Virginia expedition. The war over and the threat of being found out gone, Champe chose Cameron as the only man to whom he told the entire plot. All other accounts we have of it come from Champe’s fragmented letters, Lee’s accounts, and the correspondence between Lee, Washington and Washington’s aides regarding it.

A marker at Champe Rocks in modern-day West Virginia commemorates the daring deeds of John Champe, and the rock formation named in his honor

A few years after Cameron’s visit to him, having since married and had six children, Champe moved to Hampshire County, Virginia (now in West Virginia). In 1798, while negotiating to buy land in Morgantown, on the banks of the Monongahela River, this remarkably modest man died and was buried in the soil he had once so bravely defended.

Champe Rocks in West Virginia, named in honor of John Champe

Image Credits: 1 Benedict Arnold (wikipedia.org) 2 Sir Henry Clinton (wikipedia.org) 3 Arnold’s oath of allegiance (wikipedia.org) 4 West Point Home (wikipedia.org) 5 Peggy (wikipedia.org) 6 Arnold’s escape (wikipedia.org) 7 Cipher letter (wikipedia.org) 8 Lee (wikipedia.org) 9 Escape of Sergeant Champe (wikipedia.org) 10 Champe Rocks Marker (wikipedia.org) 11 Champe Rocks (wikipedia.org)

The Sacrifice of Nathan Hale, September 22, 1776

n the wake of brutal defeats that attended the military campaigns of 1778, General George Washington approached a young cavalry officer with an overwhelming appeal to oversee and organize the formation of America’s first spy ring. Young Benjamin Tallmadge was a mild-mannered Yale graduate, an unabashed horse-boy who prized his place in the Connecticut Light Dragoons, a school teacher before the war and the son of a minister. He was an unlikely candidate for the role of operational head of deception and espionage. But Tallmadge was impeccably educated, morally fervent and had a host of childhood connections behind enemy lines that General Washington deeply desired to utilize. The General also had one great ace to play when asking this reluctant young man to consider the post—an appeal to the memory of Tallmadge’s beloved school friend, the recently-martyred Captain Nathan Hale.

Benjamin Tallmadge (17540-1835) as Major in the 2nd Continental Dragoons

Nathan Hale (1755-1776)

As is common even to this day, a friendship of such force as theirs was cultivated in the halls of learning—in their case, Yale University. Leafing through these friends’ correspondence, it’s still touching to read the prolific use of “I remain your constant friend” and “a heart ever devoted to your welfare.” If anything malicious ever happened to one, the other would be merciless toward his assailants. In those peacetime days, their contests were against haughty seniors and exacting headmasters, but the sentiment thrived.

Nathan Hale’s signature after the affectionate closure of a letter

Both were sons of preachers: Tallmadge was bound to be an educator, Hale was expected to follow his father into the ministry. As was only to be expected of strict New England Congregationalists, both young men were taught to revere magistrates and ministers as God’s chosen servants, and to observe each Sabbath as if it were his final one on this earth. They pronounced grace thrice daily, attended church twice on Sundays, and prayed always before taking to their beds. They joined every debating society the college had to offer—theatrical ones as well—and there they learned their Cicero and Plato, their rhetoric and their logic. There they came in contact with plays such as Joseph Addison’s 1713 play Cato, and its stirring line: “What a pity it is. . . . That we can die but once to serve our country.”

Yale College in 1807

Yale of the 1770s, despite its stringent adherence to protocol and pomposity, was a place where camaraderie flourished and ideas of the time were subjected to the crucible of Biblical thought. Paradoxically, in the minds of modern historians, although perfectly in keeping with those of the Christian tradition, the college inspired a rebellious, insubordinate ethos amongst its students, not the least of which occurred when discussing relations with the Mother Country—England.

General Thomas Gage (1718-1787)

General Thomas Gage, commander of the British forces in North America, branded the place “a seminary of democracy.” Indeed, one of the teachers there, a Reverend Dr. Huntingdon—in between classes on Latin declensions and conjugations—subjected Hale and Tallmadge to a series of rants on the iniquity of the Stamp Act. These rants were digested by his students and presented by them to the debating society, from where they would take the form of printed fuel for the fire and be published as essays. Such is the course of a young patriot sharpening his reason and argument.

Example of a debate club in the 1700s

It was not all bluster and student boycotts against taxation though; they were concerned for domestic matters, too, and were figuring out their personal beliefs for themselves. One amusing incident passed down relates the time Hale and Tallmadge debated the motion: “Whether the Education of Daughters be not, without any just reason, more neglected than that of sons.” They argued for the “pro-daughter” side, and won, an event that James Hillhouse, a Yale contemporary, said “received the plaudits of the ladies present.”

The Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry, Connecticut—Nathan Hale never lived in the home seen here, as it was built by his parents after his death, but his childhood home was in the same location as the newer, larger home still present

These two friends went home from college to establish lives for themselves. They both became school teachers in corresponding schools only a short distance from each other. Tallmadge tended horses. Hale fell in love. Then came “the shot heard ’round the world.” Militias were called up, the friends joined separately. A war for independence was underway. Of their class of 1773 consisting of thirty-five members, thirteen continued into the ministry while thirteen joined the Continental Army.

Nathan Hale’s commission as Captain in the Nineteenth Regiment of Foot

When Washington’s army left Boston in 1776 and took up position in New York, Hale and Tallmadge were among his ranks. Hale was distraught over the divided state of the country exhibited by the two-thirds of the city that remained staunch Tories. He wrote to his brother: “it would grieve every good man to consider what unnatural monsters we have, as it were, in our very bowels.” A few days later, the front of General Washington’s army collapsed under an attack by Lord Howe—the battle for Brooklyn had begun, and it would prove disastrous.

Battle of Long Island

Washington and his commanders furiously debated what to do with New York City as they abandoned it. The New Englanders wanted to burn it, so as to leave the British with nothing but a blackened husk in which to spend the approaching winter; the New Yorkers, sensibly enough, were reluctant to raze their own property. Congress made the decision for them, ordering no destruction of property be done; Washington withdrew accordingly.

The Continental Army retreats from New York

This left the Continental Army in a most precarious position, surrounded by British forces under General Howe. Lacking reliable information about the enemy’s strength, positions, and intentions, Washington tasked one of his generals to find him a volunteer who would infiltrate British lines in the guise of a civilian to gather critical data to plan his next move. He needed a spy in a time when the very word was odious to the gentlemanly sensibilities of both sides. Military reconnaissance and scouting were staple roles in both armies, and the captured members of these special forces were treated with the honor of combatants. Washington himself had been such a scout in the French and Indian War. These roles were not seen as that of spying.

George Washington (on horseback) at the Battle of the Monongahela during the French and Indian War

Years later, in 1826, when interviewed by his grandson, an aging Asher Wright recounted:

“Colonel Knowlton of the Rangers, desired for Colonel Sprague, my aunt’s cousin, to go on to Long Island. Sprague refused, along with the rest of them, saying, ‘I am willing to go & fight them, but as for going among them & being taken & hung up like a dog, I will not do it’.”

No soldiers (let alone officers) in Knowlton’s Rangers—the regiment charged with providing Washington with information—wanted to take the ignoble job of secret agent. And it was then, remembered Asher, that “Hale stood by and said, ‘I will undertake the business’.” Washington met with him personally, and Hale’s orders were strictly to spy out Long Island and come home. Yet, within days of being dropped off along the sound of Long Island, Hale was betrayed to Major Robert Rogers by loyalists who recognized him as one of the “patriot Hales of Connecticut.”

Thomas Knowlton (1740-1776) is considered America’s first intelligence professional, and his unit, Knowlton’s Rangers, gathered intelligence during the early War for Independence. Knowlton was killed in action at the Battle of Harlem Heights.

Robert Rogers (1731-1795)

Like Washington, Major Rogers himself was an old veteran and scout of the French and Indian War, and had in fact offered his services to Washington the previous year, hoping to play both sides. Washington knew of Rogers’ unethical reputation and declined his services out of suspicion for his sincerity—and he was right to be suspicious, for within weeks of being spurned, Rogers was receiving a hefty pension, had garnered a promotion, and was given a regiment of Queen’s Rangers to track down patriot informants for General Howe. Rogers would prove a brutal enemy for the Patriots, and his first prey was the ill-fated Nathan Hale.

Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806) in the classic green uniform of his unit, the Queen’s Rangers—he would eventually command the unit, when it would become informally known as Simcoe’s Rangers

Rogers befriended the young man, shared numerous meals with him, and proposed that they travel together—all under the pretense of being a fellow patriot caught behind enemy lines. When Hale joined him on the third day for another meal spent together, Rogers sprang his trap and had Hale arrested as a spy, clapped in irons, and his person searched for incriminating documents, of which there were many.

A stone and plaque mark the embarkation point of Nathan Hale’s final mission

Very late the next night, Rogers unceremoniously deposited Hale at General Howe’s headquarters in Manhattan. Deliberation on Hale’s execution for espionage was mere formality. General Howe was in the midst of orchestrating a major battle campaign and had no time to conduct a full court-martial for espionage, even if one had been required. The evidence was blatant and entirely uncontroversial: Rogers had provided witnesses who could attest to Hale’s identity, and others who asserted that he had been sent by Washington; Hale himself had at last admitted that he was an officer in the Continental Army. But, as Hale was captured in civilian clothes behind enemy lines and carrying a sheaf of incriminating documents, there was neither reason nor need for Howe to agonize over this spy. After Howe, roused from his bed, had sleepily signed Hale’s death warrant, the young patriot was placed under the guard of the provost marshal to await his execution.

The greenhouse on the Beekman estate where Nathan Hale was reportedly kept the night before his execution

A plaque on the Yale Club building commemorates the execution of Yale alum Nathan Hale

After breakfast, it was time. Hale’s destination was the artillery park, about a mile away, next to the Dove Tavern, at what is now Third Avenue and Sixty-sixth Street in Manhattan. His hands were pinioned behind his back, while a couple of guards led the way. Behind him marched a squad of redcoats with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets. Accompanying the party was a cart loaded with rough pine boards for his coffin.

At the site, the noose was rudely swung over a rigid horizontal branch about fifteen feet up, and Hale shakily climbed the ladder that would soon be kicked away for the drop. Next to the tree there was a freshly-dug grave awaiting.

Nathan Hale’s final moments

At the apex of the ladder, Hale was permitted the traditional last words. The only written witness account we have of them comes from the British Captain Frederick MacKenzie, who wrote in his diary for September 22:

“He [Hale] behaved with great composure and resolution, saying he thought it the duty of every good officer, to obey any orders given him by his commander-in-chief; and desired the spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.”

The now famous “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” was lifted from Joseph Addison’s play Cato, once so popular among the Yale graduates, and put into Hale’s mouth many years later by fellow student William Hull, who was not present to witness his death, but knew it to be one of Hale’s favorite lines, and the most likely sentiment animating his friend’s heart in his last moments. Hull was not far wrong, although Hale’s emphasis seemed to have been, as any good Christian’s would be at the hour of death, on exhorting all to be always ready to meet the Great Judge, coupled with a fearless lack of remorse for the course of action which had led to his cruel demise.

A 1925 commemorative Nathan Hale postage stamp

Bronze memorial to Nathan Hale

Hanging is a most awful business, one easily bungled, especially without the presence of a quick-drop platform or an expert at positioning the noose. Still, it was a method that had been cultivated amongst civilized societies to be an instant and tidy form of execution. Hangmen were masters of their grim craft and, in the case of a typical court-martial, an expert would be employed to execute the sentence. No such bare-minimum consideration was afforded Nathan Hale. He was made to climb a ladder which would then be kicked out from under him, a rope was thrown over a nearby branch, and his hangman was a recently freed slave with no experience in minimizing the agony of the executed. These gruesome details are not relayed in any way to distress readers unduly, but they are what reached the ears of Washington, Tallmadge, and Hale’s distraught family when word of his sacrifice spread. They are the ugly realities of the cost exacted of patriotic men and women for our liberty. Hale’s body was left hanging as an example and a deterrent for three days beside a disfigured effigy of Washington, until he was cut down by a slave and buried in the unmarked grave beside the tree. He was twenty-one years old.

Two Yale servicemen pose beside a statue of Nathan Hale in 1917

George Washington, while a man of admirable mental resolve and a great capacity to endure, was not unaffected by the tragedies of subordinates such as Hale, men who were small in the aggregate, but who represented then, as they do now, the critical component of free societies—a willingness to sacrifice, no matter the cost to reputation or life.

Benjamin Tallmadge in 1790 with his son, William

Our founding times were full of such men. It is why Washington could appeal to Benjamin Tallmadge on the basis of his poor friend to take up the mantle and continue the work, despite so crushing a setback. It is why Tallmadge had the mettle to take his grief and assemble the single most effective spy ring of the war—The Culper Ring—whose collected information quite literally won us the war, and whose airtight secrecy was so great that not even Benedict Arnold’s treachery could sink them, or historians identify them until this century. Benjamin Tallmadge lost one friend in a brutal way, then proceeded to rope in dozens more to shoulder the same risks and carry on the cause. Such is the mindset of those with an eternal vision. Such is the legacy we Americans have inherited.

Image Credits: 1 Benjamin Tallmadge (wikipedia.org) 2 Nathan Hale (wikipedia.org) 3 Hale’s Signature (wikipedia.org) 4 Yale College (wikipedia.org) 5 Thomas Gage (wikipedia.org) 6 1700s debate club (wikipedia.org) 7 Hale Homestead (wikipedia.org) 8 Nathan Hale’s Commission (wikipedia.org) 9 Battle of Long Island (wikipedia.org) 10 Continental Retreat (wikipedia.org) 11 George Washington (wikipedia.org) 12 Thomas Knowlton (wikipedia.org) 13 Robert Rogers (wikipedia.org) 14 John Graves Simcoe (wikipedia.org) 15 Hale Embarkation (wikipedia.org) 16 Beekman Greenhouse (wikipedia.org) 17 Hale plaque (wikipedia.org) 18 Final moments of Nathan Hale (wikipedia.org) 19 Postage Stamp (wikipedia.org) 20 Bronze statue of Nathan Hale (wikipedia.org) 21 Yale Servicemen in 1917 (wikipedia.org) 22 Benjamin Tallmadge (wikipedia.org)