Tarry at home travels . omething very fine, I say, — it is whatwe call soldier-like, — in his narrative in thecredit he gives to the spirit and discipline ofthe retreating force as it retired southwardfrom Ticonderoga. A hundred and thirty yearslater it is worth while to contrast it with theunfair impression given at the time in New Eng-land. Because the Americans retreated, it was,perhaps, the habit of our people to say they ranaway. In fact, at the battle of Hubbardton, withtwo thousand men they engaged, according toBurgoynes account, the advanced guard ofthe whole English army. Burgoyne say
Tarry at home travels . omething very fine, I say, — it is whatwe call soldier-like, — in his narrative in thecredit he gives to the spirit and discipline ofthe retreating force as it retired southwardfrom Ticonderoga. A hundred and thirty yearslater it is worth while to contrast it with theunfair impression given at the time in New Eng-land. Because the Americans retreated, it was,perhaps, the habit of our people to say they ranaway. In fact, at the battle of Hubbardton, withtwo thousand men they engaged, according toBurgoynes account, the advanced guard ofthe whole English army. Burgoyne says thatthey left dead on the field Colonel Francis andmany other officers, with upwards of two hundredmen, — that they lost six hundred in lost also one colonel, seven captains, andtwo hundred and twenty other prisoners. Itseems to me really pathetic that as well-fought abattle as this should appear in the popular notionof that time as a disgraceful retreat. Nathan Hale, the colonel of one of the regi-. 123 VERMONT 125 ments, was taken prisoner. Burgoyne paroledhim for two years which expired in 1779, whenhe loyally went to New York and surrenderedhimself on his parole. He died at New Utrecht,Long Island, just thirty-seven years old, threeyears after his cousin Nathan Hale, a Connecti-cut cousin, who was hanged in disgrace by Gen-eral Howe, whose people had arrested him a fewdays before. This Captain Nathan Hale washanged at the corner of the little park nearBroadway. The disgrace of his being hangedres-ted on the whole Connecticut householdfrom which he came. The method of his deathwas what they grieved for. My o\\ti father,who bore his uncles name, was forbidden tospeak of him to his father, because the wholewas so painful. His one request when he wastold that he must die was that he might beshot and not hanged. But now one of theseNathan Hales is remembered. There is a statueto him on Broadway. I stop to read the inscrip-tion every time I pass there: I am s
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