Opinion

Pondering a patriot

At first glance, he doesn’t seem to have much in common with 21st-century New Yorkers.

He was one of 12 children born to farmers in Connecticut. He was fluent in Greek and Latin by age 14, when he enrolled at Yale. He graduated to teach school, including a class for girls that met at dawn.

When revolution broke out two years later, he enlisted with the rebels.

He was hanged for espionage 235 years ago today, near what’s now 66th Street and Third Avenue, when the British Army caught him spying on its plans to invade Manhattan. He was 21. But his last words outlived him: “I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged,” said Capt. Nathan Hale, “that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.”

That’s what a Boston newspaper reported a few years later. It was only long after that that one of Hale’s friends (whose talent for sound-bites might have taken him far in our world) trimmed it to “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

No one took dictation at the scaffold, so we’ll never know Hale’s exact words as the British Army executed him. But he’s far likelier to have talked about the “cause” of freedom than he was his “country.”

The colonists didn’t think of themselves as a nation. They were citizens of the British Empire (or, as the revolution progressed, of their states).

In that, they were remarkably similar to modern New Yorkers. King George III’s administration promised that, so long as Americans relinquished certain freedoms, the British Army would protect them. Sound familiar?

The Proclamation of 1763 forbid anyone to settle beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Colonists also had to buy goods from British merchants, even if Dutch or French ones offered better prices.

Of course, there were taxes. We laugh at the pennies the government charged purchasers of newspapers or playing cards, but it wasn’t the amount that angered customers; it was that the tax supported the Redcoats policing their towns — to protect them, the king said. To control us, they insisted.

The colonists defined “liberty” as making the choices and living life as one sees fit, without coercion from any man, even if — especially if — the state employs him. Eventually, enough Americans decided they’d rather be free than safe and revolted successfully against the government.

The same fears and debate over liberty rage today. But Nathan Hale reminded us as the noose tightened that freedom is so beautiful, so invaluable, he’d gladly give more than just one life for it.

Would we?