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Tag: 9/8/1776

  • Nathan Hale’s Fateful Decision–September 8, 1776

    Cover art for September 8, 1776: Statue of Nathan Hale at the Tribune Tower in Chicago by Bela Pratt. This statue is probably the model for two postage stamps issued in the 1910s. via Wikimedia Commons.

    There are lots of images of Nathan Hale that have him looking like a middle-aged fellow, and then there are others that have him looking like some kind of idealized young man, with a prominent jaw and youthful good looks.

    The fact is, nobody today is 100% sure what he looked like, because no contemporaneous images of him have been found. The best we have is a description written by a fellow soldier of his, Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick. Bostwick wrote:

    I can now in imagination see his person & hear his voice—his person I should say was a little above the common stature in height, his shoulders of a moderate breadth, his limbs strait & very plump: regular features—very fair skin—blue eyes—flaxen or very light hair which was always kept short—his eyebrows a shade darker than his hair & his voice rather sharp or piercing—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)—his mental powers seemed to be above the common sort—his mind of a sedate and sober cast, & he was undoubtedly Pious; for it was remark’d that when any of the soldiers of his company were sick he always visited them & usually Prayed for & with them in their sickness.

    Hale was twenty-one years old in 1776, so the images of him as an older man are almost certainly incorrect. The statue used in today’s cover art is one of several copies cast in 1912 from a sculpture by Bela Pratt. (Baltimoreans note: Bela Pratt was a distant cousin of Enoch Pratt, the man who founded the city’s libraries.) In addition, Pratt’s sculpture was the model for two postage stamps issued in 1925 and 1929.

    We know nowadays that Hale’s efforts to infiltrate the British didn’t work out very well, and Mike and I will return to his story in a few days to tell you specifically how it shook out, and a long-standing controversy over his last words—what did he say, and how did he say it?

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  • More Brooklyn Aftermath–September 5, 1776

    Cover art for September 5, 1776: The Capture of Nathaniel Woodhull, John Ward Dunsmore, 1910. via New York Historical Society.

    The American Army has evacuated Brooklyn. Reports are coming in from all over that the Loyalists are being rather sore winners over the event. Refugees are coming into Connecticut from across the Long Island Sound. George Washington, literally the last man out of Brooklyn, is trying to figure out his next move, and that of the British.

    Nathanael Greene, who missed the Battle of Long Island because he’d been seriously ill, finally returns to duty. At last, some good news for General Washington! And maybe some sage advice regarding what should be done next to preserve New York City!

    And Greene tells him to get out of town. There’s no way that you can hold a place like New York City if you can’t control the shoreline across the East River, no more than a few hundred feet away.

    Washington doesn’t think this is a good idea, partially because he thinks New York is more important to the Continental Congress than it actually is. But Greene has another idea, which we’ll get into in a couple of days.

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