Nathan Hale: One Life to Give | 5-Minute Videos | PragerU

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Transcript:
Nathan Hale: One Life to Give
Presented by Eric Metaxas

“I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”

This is one of the signature lines of the American Revolution — the quintessential statement of American patriotism.

It was spoken by Nathan Hale just before a British hangman executed him on September 22, 1776.

Hale was twenty-one years old.

Who was this remarkable young man? And why was he willing to sacrifice his promising young life for the cause of liberty?

Nathan Hale was born June 6, 1755 in Coventry, Connecticut to a family with a hundred-year history in New England. His great-grandfather John Hale had been a prominent figure in the Salem Witch Trials.

His father Richard Hale subscribed to the same fire-and-brimstone doctrines and instilled in his children a deep, abiding reverence for God.

Studious, pious, but enormously charming, Nathan convinced everyone that he was destined for greatness. And the first stop on that road, at age 14, was a Yale education. There, Nathan thrived. He was curious about everything and attempted to master everything, from Greek and Latin to science and philosophy.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with sharp blue eyes, he was quick to smile. In the fashion of the age, he tied his thick blondish-brown hair in a ponytail.

Jared Sparks, future Harvard