Nathan Hale – 1755-1776

Hale was a Connecticut schoolteacher who served as militia captain in the revolution and volunteered to conduct espionage behind the British lines in Long Island, New York. Captured, he suffered the fate of a spy: hanging. Long-accepted tradition has it that his final words were, “My only regret is that I have but one life to lose for my country.” This was a close paraphrase of a line from Cato by the 18th-century British playwright Joseph Addison, which the Yaleeducated Hale may well have read—or which may have been supplied by some contemporary Patriot myth maker.