A True American at Yale
Tucked into a corner of the oldest part of Yale University's campus is a statue of the famous Revolutionary War spy, Nathan Hale. My children have long been fascinated by it. For years, it was right outside my husband's office, and although he has since moved spaces, we still make periodic trips to see the statue. In one of my favorite family photos, we are introducing our youngest child (then 2 weeks old) to the Hale statue, while his older siblings once again inspect this interesting American artifact.
The statue shows Nathan Hale shortly before his death by hanging. We don't know what Hale looked like—there are no surviving portraits—so the statue is the artist's best guess. Hale, his hands and feet bound, looks up toward the sky, perhaps toward the Eternal. He's unafraid, and he appears very young. Around the base of the statue are inscribed the words Hale is (perhaps apocryphally) said to have spoken right before his death: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." My older sons, now 10 and 8, consider this morbidly fascinating.
Hale attended Yale College as a teenager and graduated when he was 18. After working briefly as a teacher, he joined a Connecticut regiment once the war began. In 1776, he volunteered to spy on the British forces in New York. Captured during this mission, Hale was questioned by the British commander Gen. William Howe and executed the next day in Manhattan. He was only 21. His family never got his body back to bury, and the location of his remains is unknown.
At the turn of the 20th century, Yale alumni decided to create a statue to commemorate Hale's heroism. As is not atypical for university efforts run by committee, there was controversy and significant delay, but nearly 15 years later, in 1914, the Hale statue was installed on campus, right outside Connecticut Hall, a building that existed when Hale was a student. Shortly after the statue was placed, Yale college students on their way to fight in World War I stopped to take a photo with it, per an alumni magazine. Separated from Hale by almost 150 years, these young men about to engage in the first modern global conflict with industrial-scale weaponry took a moment to pause next to the image of a young man about their age killed when America was fighting an imperial power with muskets.
In the 1970s, a replica of the statue was placed in a courtyard of the CIA's headquarters. According to the agency's museum, "Over the years, a tradition has developed around the Hale statue: before going overseas, CIA officers leave a coin at the statue's base." Invoking the aid of America's first executed spy, our intelligence agents leave the coins in hopes of "good luck and [to] ensure that Hale will keep the officers safe on their mission."
I'm not exactly sure why my kids are so drawn to this statue, but I'm glad they are. Hale spent only a short time as a teacher in life, but in death he's currently giving the most interesting and important kind of history lesson: about the throughlines that run across the American story, and the ability of one individual to alter the nation's course for the better. I hope my children carry that lesson into their own adulthoods, as they—and the American experiment—walk on into the future.
