"Reflect on what gratitude requires of you; if that is insufficient to move you, attend to your own interest; we offer you a refuge against the distress which, you universally acknowledge, broods, with increasing and intolerable weight over all your country. "Leaving you to consult with each other upon this invitation, we do now declare, that whoever shall be found and remain in peace, at his usual place of residence, shall be shielded from any insult, either to his person, or his property, excepting such as bear offices, either civil or military, under your present usurped government, of whom it will be further required that they shall give proofs of their penitence and voluntary submission; and they shall then partake of the like immunity. "Those whose folly and obstinacy may slight this favorable warning, must take notice, that they are not to expect a continuance of that lenity which their inveteracy would now render. "Given on board His Majesty's ship Camilla, on the Sound, July 4, 1799. GEORGE COLLIER, WM. TRYON." (Printed copies are distributed.) General Garth. Adjutant, has the proclamation of freedom to all slaves who join us been already read? Adjutant. Yes, Sir, it was read on landing at Union Wharf; and will be read again there, when we re-embark. Colonel Edmund Fanning (in command of one of the invading regiments, stepping forward, and addressing General Garth). General, on your left are the buildings of Yale College. I am an alumnus of Yale of the Class of 1757. If the town should be burned, I venture to ask that these buildings be spared. General Garth. Whether the town is burned or not, whether in whole or part, must depend upon General Tryon. General Tryon. Thus far no resistance has been made since the surrender of the town. Colonel Fanning's intercession shall be considered later. We shall not forget that we have many friends here. (British wounded pass through the town. The American prisoners march up under guard. Among them is Professor Daggett, who stumbles along with difficulty. Two of the Hessians, who are on the Green, slip off and desert. Joshua Chandler (Yale 1747), a Tory lawyer, steps up to the commander of the guard over the prisoners, and obtains permission for the release of Professor Daggett on account of his feeble condition. The Professor is carried off on a litter. The clock strikes nine, the British troops form. Colonel Fanning rides up to General Garth.) Colonel Fanning. General, may I hope that my old college town will not be burned? General Garth. The orders are not to burn it, Sir. It is too beautiful a town to burn. (Evacuation. The British troops form and march out, with a brass band. The prisoners, thirty or forty, follow. Between two of the regiments are some thirty Tory Americans, carrying small trunks, portmanteaus, and bundles, on the way to take ship and abandon their country. Mr. Chandler is among them, and the citizen who jeered at Captain Peck.) SCENE III THE MARTYRDOM OF NATHAN HALE By GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR "That life is long which answers life's great end."-Young. It is a Sabbath morning, and the place the encampment of the Royal Artillery overlooking the East River, and facing the Old Post Road from New York to Albany and Boston, not far from the spot where Hale's regiment had landed but a few months before. The parade ground of the camp is empty save for a small straggling group of old men, women and children, and a thin line of red-coated soldiers. To the South, a cloud of smoke rises from the burning city of New York, half obscuring the sky and casting its pall of gloom over the scene of the tragedy about to be enacted. In the distance, the grave and even agonizing sound of muffled drums is heard with smiting reverberations. Gradually these increase in intensity until two drummers appear, followed by a rude cart dragged along by half a dozen unkempt soldiers, hardly recognizable as such in their rough undress. Behind them the common hangman, a mulatto, bears the ladder, his neck, as was the grewsome custom, encircled by the fatal rope. Then a handful of soldiers in uniform, marching two by two, and beside them, the British Provost Marshal Cunningham, drunken, ferocious, and of an infamy so notorious that the by-standers shrink back from him. And then,-Hale-his hands bound behind him, walking alone, with measured tread-a Captain in the Continental Army, and yet so boyish, with flushed cheeks |