Nathan Hale – kapitan w Armii Kontynentalnej podczas Wojny o niepodległość Stanów Zjednoczonych, jeden z oficerów Patriotów. Bohater narodowy USA.
Syn purytanów Richarda i Elizabeth Hale'ów zdobył wykształcenie na uniwersytecie w Yale.
Zgłosił się na ochotnika do przeprowadzenia misji szpiegowskiej na liniach oddziałów angielskiej armii. Podczas przeszpiegów został schwytany przez Anglików i powieszony. Przed śmiercią wyrzekł znane słowa: Żałuję jedynie, że mam tylko jedno życie, które mogę poświęcić dla mojego kraju.
W Stanach Zjednoczonych postawiono mu wiele pomników. Jego nazwiskiem nazwano jeden z amerykańskich okrętów podwodnych.
„Żałuję jedynie że mam tylko jedno życie, które mogę poświęcić dla mojego kraju.”
przed śmiercią na szubienicy, na którą brytyjscy żołnierze skazali go za szpiegostwo w ich obozie.
Źródło: Terry Crowdy, Historia szpiegostwa i agentury, wyd. Bellona, 2006, s. 110.
“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
Last words before being hanged by the British as a spy, (September 22, 1776), according to the account by William Hull based on reports by British Captain John Montresor who was present and who spoke to Hull under a flag of truce the next day:
‘On the morning of his execution,’ continued the officer, ‘my station was near the fatal spot, and I requested the Provost Marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee, while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered: he was calm, and bore himself with gentle dignity, in the consciousness of rectitude and high intentions. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him: he wrote two letters, one to his mother and one to a brother officer.’ He was shortly after summoned to the gallows. But a few persons were around him, yet his characteristic dying words were remembered. He said, ‘I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.’
Some speculation exists that Hale might have been repeating or paraphrasing lines from Joseph Addison's play Cato, Act IV, Scene IV:
How beautiful is death when earned by virtue.
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
that we can die but once to serve our country.
See George Dudley Seymour, Captain Nathan Hale, Major John Palsgrave Wyllys, A Digressive History, (1933), p. 39.
Another early variant of his last words exists, as reported in the Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser (17 May 1781):
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.
Statement to Captain William Hull prior to his spying mission, as quoted in "Captain Nathan Hale (1755 - 1776)" http://www.connecticutsar.org/patriots/hale_nathan.htm by Rev. Edward Everett Hale
Kontekst: I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claim to perform that service are imperious.
