A lesson in history with a look at life of Connecticut’s Nathan Hale

SALISBURY — Was Nathan Hale a brave young man who uttered the immortal words, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country”?

Was he a hapless amateur spy who got caught almost immediately?

Was he a scapegoat?

State historian and University of Connecticut professor Walt Woodward addressed these questions at the Scoville Memorial Library Saturday, April 11, in a talk sponsored by the library and the Salisbury Association Historical Society.

“I’m here to announce my candidacy …,” he began, getting a laugh from the standing-room only crowd.

He noted the number present, saying he had bet Salisbury author Tom Schactman that only four people would show up on the first legitimately spring-like day of 2015.

“That’s OK, I’m not going to pay him.”

Woodward said that new research in the last decade has cast some doubt on the commonly accepted story of Hale, the Connecticut schoolteacher and American spy who was hanged by the British on Sept. 22, 1776, uttering the famous words before the sentence was carried out.

“Academic historians are not kind to heroes in general,” he said. “They tend to be critical, not reverential.

“Sometimes the results are not pretty.”

In 2003, Woodward said, the Library of Congress received a handwritten history of the American Revolution written by a man with the remarkable name of Consider Tiffany, of Hartland.

Tiffany’s manuscript “casts Hale in a new light.”

The history confirms it was the then-famous Robert Rogers, of Rogers’ Rangers, who had Hale arrested.

“Rogers is almost unknown today, because he was a Loyalist.”

Rogers held two meetings with Hale in taverns. He pretended he was a Revolutionary sympathizer and fooled the young Hale.

At the second meeting, the Tiffany story goes, Rogers had Hale arrested.

“Hale acted like anything but a hero,” Woodward said. He denied everything.

Tiffany’s account is of “a panicky effort to save his skin.”

This contradicts the account of Continental Army Captain William Hull, who wrote of Hale’s execution being reported by a British officer in the American camp under a flag of truce.

That version is the familiar one — the brave Hale, having been refused a trial, a Bible or a clergyman, makes his famous statement and dies.

Woodward said it is likely that neither account is correct, and explained why historians might be skeptical.

“Neither were eyewitnesses, and each had his own personal agenda.”

Tiffany was a Loyalist, and his Hale story is part of a larger “prophetic jeremiad” that forecast doom for the young Republic.

“It’s the rarest of all things — history written by the loser.”

Hull was a patriot through and through, with a long record of service in the Revolution.

But his account is not referenced by anybody until 1799, and wasn’t published until 1839, as part of a posthumous biography written by family members, anxious to rehabilitate Hull’s reputation.

His reputation needed work because, as a general during the War of 1812, he surrendered Detroit without firing a shot.

He was court-martialed for cowardice and sentenced to be shot. He got a reprieve from President James Madison but spent the remainder of his life in disgrace. Hull died in 1825.

His biographers suggested that Hull’s action in Detroit — surrendering to a superior force to avoid needless death — “could be seen as intensely patriotic, like Hale.”

“It would be naive to read either account without being mindful of agendas,” Woodward said. “Historians have to make choices about what to believe.”

But there is one big factor in the Hale story that gets overlooked: the massive fire in New York city, which was the British headquarters.

As the Americans left the city, there was a ferocious debate on whether or not to raze the place. The New Yorkers, backed by the Pennsylvanians, were appalled by the idea.

“But the New Englanders had long viewed New York as a commercial Sodom and Gomorrah,” said Woodward.

“What else is new?”

In any event, the same night, Sept. 21, that Rogers exposed Hale, fire broke out in a New York tavern and a considerable conflagration ensued.

Woodward said that most historians have concluded the fire was an accident, not a deliberate act of sabotage.

If the British had evidence that Hale had been on a mission to start the fire, they surely would have made a fuss about it, Woodward said.

“But New York was smoldering, and rage was white-hot,” he continued.

And Hale matched the image of the arsonist many British believed was to blame.

“In the search for a symbol of revenge, he would do just fine.”