In September 1776, two men from Connecticut each embarked on a dangerous mission.
Through their experiences, The Martyr and the Traitor illuminates the impact of the Revolution on ordinary lives and how the stories of patriots and loyalists were remembered and forgotten after independence..
She explores how these men forged their loyalties in perilous times and believed the causes for which they died to be honorable.
In The Martyr and the Traitor, Virginia De John Anderson offers an intertwined narrative of men from very similar backgrounds and reveals how their relationships within their families and communities became politicized as the imperial crisis with Britain erupted.
And Hale, caught spying on the British, would likely be remembered as a traitor, rather than a Revolutionary hero.
Had that been the outcome, Dunbar, convicted of treason and since forgotten, might well be celebrated as a martyr.
They died when there was every indication that Britain would win the American Revolution.
Neither Nathan Hale nor Moses Dunbar deliberately set out to be a revolutionary or a loyalist, yet both suffered the same fate.
Both met their deaths at the end of a hangman\'s rope, one executed as a spy for the American cause and the other as a traitor to it.
Neither man completed his mission.
The other man traveled to New York to accept a captain\'s commission in a loyalist regiment before returning home to recruit others to join British forces.
One of the men, a soldier disguised as a schoolmaster, made his way to British-controlled Manhattan and began furtively making notes and sketches to bring back to the beleaguered Continental Army general, George Washington.
In September 1776, two men from Connecticut each embarked on a dangerous mission
