While waiting for the provost to arrive with written orders, captured spy Nathan Hale and his hangman chat amicably until Hale is swallowed by a huge book of American history. When the book returns him to the gallows, Hale knows all of the country's future.; Hale and the provost describe the siege of Boston and the Battle of Bunker Hill from their own perspectives. Hale describes his frustration at always just missing the actual fighting.; Rogers captures Nathan Hale and hales him before General Howe, who orders the inept spy hanged according to the rules of war. Since he has seen the future in the giant history book he assures the provost and hangman that despite its disasters, America wins and becomes a world power. The provost and hangman agree to delay the hanging, and Hale begins to tell more stories from the history that will be.; Henry Knox struggles mightily and ingeniously to move the great guns of Fort Ticonderoga through winter weather to reach George Washington outside Boston.; The British invasion fleet arrives at last. Colonel Thomas Knowlton, hard-bitten veteran of Bunker Hill and the French and Indian War, recruits Nathan Hale as a ranger and a spy.; Crispus Attucks tells his tale. As Bostonians and occupying British troops resent each other, conflicts flare until violence breaks out on March 5, 1770. Attacked by a mob, British soldiers open fire, killing five Bostonians, including Crispus Attucks.; Disguised as a schoolmaster seeking work, Hale wanders Long Island taking notes on British dispositions, his mission now pointless as they have already invaded Manhattan. Major Rogers convinces the naive Hale that he too is an American spy, and arranges a meeting with other "spies."; Knox delivers the heavy guns to Washington, but the British troops in Boston are out of range. Washington orders a fort prefabricated, then moves it and the guns to Dorchester Heights under cover of darkness. Once the guns open fire on Boston below, the British quit the town.; Led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, the Green Mountain Boys capture Fort Ticonderoga. Allen launches an ill-advised attack on Montreal, but is taken prisoner.; Hale tells his story: after he loses 21 hands of cards in a row, Hale's fellow students review his life and acclaim him the unluckiest man at Yale.; Realizing that Manhattan can be threatened from any direction, Knowlton asks his rangers for a volunteer to spy out British intentions. The rangers refuse, either deigning to spy or regarding the mission as suicidal. Although ill with fever, Hale volunteers, receives his orders from George Washington, and sets off on his mission.; Hale and Hempstead make their way to Connecticut, then make the surreptitious crossing of Long Island Sound. Once at Long Island Nathan Hale disembarks alone to begin his spying mission, never recking that he is observed from landing by Major Robert Rogers.; Americans dig in on Long Island, hoping to offset the British tactical and numerical advantage. Nathan Hale's Yale classmate Ben Talmadge joins the army, and Washington reads the Declaration of Independence to the assembled troops.; The British pen the American army into Brooklyn Heights. Taking advantage of night, fog, and rain, Washington surreptitiously evacuates the entire army to Manhattan.; Outnumbered four to one, Knowlton and his rangers slow down advancing British until the main American army drives them off at Harlem Heights. Knowlton is killed in the battle.; Nathan Hale and the provost debate the causes, rights, and wrongs of the American Revolution.; Nathan Hale and Sergeant Hempstead skirmish with British troops attacking Long Island. The outnumbered and outmaneuvered American army panics, breaks, and runs.; After being transferred to New York City by sea, Hale plans and leads a cutting-out expedition that captures a laden supply vessel from under the guns of a British man-o-war.; Hale's starving troops are frustrated when an artillery round blows a cow to shreds.; American soldiers enter Boston at last. Henry Knox's bookshop has been vandalized, but the army is ordered to New York anyway.