*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts *Includes a bibliography for further reading For over 230 years, American schoolchildren have been taught about the story of Nathan Hale, or at least a legend of it, and in the process the myth of Hale and his apocryphal final words have immortalized the young man as America's most famous spy, despite his failed mission. After the siege of Boston forced the British to evacuate that city in March 1776, Continental Army commander George Washington suspected that the British would move by sea to New York City, the next logical target in an attempt to end a colonial insurrection. He thus rushed his army south to defend the city. In the summer of 1776, the British conducted the largest amphibious expedition in North America's history at the time, landing over 20,000 troops on Long Island. Washington's army would ultimately be pushed west all the way through New Jersey the rest of the year, but he nonetheless maintained intelligence operations around New York City, and one of the early spies was young Nathan Hale. A young officer in the Continental Army from Connecticut, Hale was asked by Washington to go behind British lines on Long Island and bring back information on what the British were up to there. Unfortunately, Hale was quickly identified by Loyalists, found with incriminating papers on his body, and executed. Hale's name may have very well been lost to history but for propaganda efforts to make him a martyr to the cause, most notably the reports of his last words about regretting that he had but one life to lose for his country. If Hale said anything like the quote he's best known for, he was likely reciting an exchange in the play Cato by Joseph Addison or playing off of it, but regardless of what he actually said, the story and the legend of Hale aimed to cover up the fact that his mission was an abject failure, due both to bad luck and ineptitude. Hale's death made good grist for legends, and Hale's legacy has since been wrapped up in his final comments, but the execution also convinced Washington of the need to develop a more properly-prepared body of secret service agents that could bring him the information he needed to make good military decisions. Thus, if anything, Hale's lasting legacy, at least from a concrete perspective, lay in Washington's formation of the Culper Ring after his execution. While in the Continental Army's winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, over the winter of 1776-1777, Washington began to more thoroughly organize what he thought would be needed. The Culper Ring became one of the colonists' first major intelligence efforts during the Revolution. The ring consisted mostly of a group of civilians in and around New York City who spied on the British forces and Loyalist Americans and reported what they saw and overheard ultimately to Washington, who took a personal, hands-on approach to their management. And though they were overlooked for generations, the relatively little-known clandestine actions of the patriotic men and women who participated in the Culper Ring unquestionably contributed to the eventual victory in the long struggle for American independence. In recent times, several good books have covered part or all of the history of the Culper Ring, but the main sources still consist of the ring's correspondence, much of which has somehow survived, between the members of the ring and their military handlers. After modern histories brought their story more fully to light, the members of the Culper Ring have since become subjects (albeit with the historical facts somewhat dramatized and altered) of a recent hit television show, Turn: Washington's Spies. Nathan Hale and the Culper Ring: The History of the Continental Army's Most Famous Spy and Spy Ring during the American Revolution profiles the life of the young spy and the spy ring Washington organized after his execution.