The Battle of Long Island leads to British victory and the capture of New York City via a flanking move from Staten Island across Long Island.

Nathan Hale had volunteered on September 8, 1776, to go behind enemy lines and report on British troop movements.

He had been ferried across on September 12.

It is an act of spying that is immediately punishable by death and poses a great risk to Hale.

During his mission, New York City (at this time the area at the southern tip of Manhattan around Wall Street) has fallen to British forces on September 15 and Washington has been forced to retreat to the island's north in Harlem Heights (what is now Morningside Heights).

Several people, including General Nathanael Greene and New York's John Jay, had advocated burning the city down to deny its benefits to the British.

Washington had laid the question before the Second Continental Congress, which rejected the idea: "it should in no event be damaged."

Nathan Hal was born in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1755 to Richard Hale and Elizabeth Strong.

In 1768, when he was fourteen years old, he was sent with his brother Enoch, who was sixteen, to Yale College.

Nathan was a classmate of fellow patriot spy Benjamin Tallmadge.

The Hale brothers belonged to the Linonian Society of Yale, which debates topics in astronomy, mathematics, literature, and the ethics of slavery.

Nathan graduated with first-class honors in 1773 at age eighteen and became a teacher, first in East Haddam and later in New London.

After the Revolutionary War began in 1775, he had joined a Connecticut militia and was elected first lieutenant within five months.

His militia unit had participated in the Siege of Boston, but Hale had remained behind.

It has been suggested that he was unsure as to whether he wanted to fight, or whether he was hindered because his teaching contract in New London did not expire until several months later, in July 1775.

On July 4, 1775, Hale had received a letter from his classmate and friend Benjamin Tallmadge, who had gone to Boston to see the siege for himself.

He had written to Hale, "Was I in your condition, I think the more extensive service would be my choice. Our holy Religion, the honor of our God, a glorious country, & a happy constitution is what we have to defend."

Tallmadge's letter was so inspiring that, several days later, Hale had accepted a commission as first lieutenant in the 7th Connecticut Regiment under Colonel Charles Webb of Stamford.

In the following spring, the army had moved to Manhattan Island to prevent the British from taking over New York City.

In September, General Washingtonh ad been desperate to determine the location of the imminent British invasion of Manhattan Island.

To this end, Washington needed a spy behind enemy lines, and Hale was the only volunteer.

A civilian exodus from New York City had begun well before the British fleet arrived in the harbor.

The arrival the previous February of the first Continental Army troops in the city had prompted some people to pack up and leave, including Loyalists who were specifically targeted by the army and Patriots.

The capture of Long Island had only accelerated the abandonment of the city.

During the Continental Army's occupation of the city, many abandoned buildings had been appropriated for the army's use.

When the British arrived in the city, the property of Patriots had been confiscated for the British army's use.

Despite this, housing and other demands of the military occupation significantly strain the city's available building stock.

A quarter of the lower portion of Manhattan burns on September 21 in the Great New York Fire of 1776.

According to the eyewitness account of John Joseph Henry, an American prisoner aboard the HMS Pearl, the fire began in the Fighting Cocks Tavern, near Whitehall Slip.

Abetted by dry weather and strong winds, the flames spread north and west, moving rapidly among tightly packed homes and businesses.

Residents poured into the streets, clutching what possessions they could and found refuge on the grassy town commons (today, City Hall Park).

The fire crossed Broadway near Beaver Street, then burned most of the city between Broadway and the Hudson River.

The fire raged into the daylight hours and is stopped by changes in wind direction as much as by the actions of some of the citizenry and British marines sent, according to Henry, "in aid of the inhabitants."

It may also have been stopped by the relatively undeveloped property of King's College, located at the northern end of the fire-damaged area.

Estimates for the number of buildings destroyed range from four hundred to one thousand, representing between ten and twenty-five percent of the four thousand city buildings in existence at this time.

Among the buildings destroyed is Trinity Church; St. Paul's Chapel survives.

The fire is later widely thought to have been started by American saboteurs to keep the city from falling into British hands, though Washington and the Congress had already denied this idea.

It has also been speculated that the fire was the work of British soldiers acting without orders.

In the fire's aftermath, more than two hundred American partisans are rounded up by the British, among them Nathan Hale.

An account of Nathan Hale's capture will be written by Consider Tiffany, a Connecticut shopkeeper and Loyalist, and obtained by the Library of Congress.

In Tiffany's account, Major Robert Rogers of the Queen's Rangers saw Hale in a tavern and recognized him despite his disguise.

After luring Hale into betraying himself by pretending to be a patriot himself, Rogers and his Rangers apprehend Hale near Flushing Bay in Queens, New York.

Another story is that his Loyalist cousin, Samuel Hale, had been the one who revealed his true identity.

General Howe had established his headquarters in the Beekman House in a rural part of Manhattan, on a rise between what are now 50th and 51st Streets between First and Second Avenues, near where Beekman Place commemorates the connection.

Hale reportedly was questioned by Howe, and physical evidence was found on him.

According to tradition, Hale spent the night in a greenhouse at the mansion.

He requested a Bible; his request was denied.

Sometime later, he requested a clergyman. Again, the request was denied.

According to the standards of the time, spies are hanged as illegal combatants.

On the morning of September 22, 1776, Hale is marched along Post Road to the Park of Artillery, which is next to a public house called the Dove Tavern (at modern-day 66th Street and Third Avenue), and hanged.

He is twenty-one years old.

Bill Richmond, a thirteen-year-old former slave and Loyalist who will later become a boxer in Europe, is reportedly one of the hangmen, responsible for securing the rope to a strong tree and preparing the noose.
 
By all accounts, Hale comported himself well before the hanging.

Over the years, there has been speculation as to whether he specifically uttered the line: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

The line may be a revision of "I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service."

General Howe has established his headquarters in the Beekman House in a rural part of Manhattan, on a rise between what are now 50th and 51st Streets between First and Second Avenues, near where Beekman Place commemorates the connection.

Hale reportedly is questioned by Howe, and physical evidence is found on him.

Rogers provides information about the case.

According to tradition, Hale had spent the night in a greenhouse at the mansion. He had requested a Bible; his request was denied.

Sometime later, he had requested a clergyman.

Again, the request was denied.

According to the standards of this time, spies are hanged as illegal combatants.

On the morning of September 22, 1776, Hale is marched along Post Road to the Park of Artillery, which is next to a public house called the Dove Tavern (at modern-day 66th Street and Third Avenue), and hanged.

He is twenty-one years old.

Bill Richmond, a thirteen-year-old former slave and Loyalist who will later become a boxer in Europe, is reportedly one of the hangmen, responsible for securing the rope to a strong tree and preparing the noose.

By all accounts, Hale had comported himself well before the hanging.

Over the years, there has been speculation as to whether he specifically uttered the line: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

The line may be a revision of "I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service."