THE CONNECTICUT JOURNAL, New Haven, October 11, 1781

• American Revolutionary War original
• American Issac Hayne's execution - hanging

Most of the front page is taken up with various correspondences from and to C. Fraser, Isaac Hayne, Lord Rawdon & John Collock, with a prefacing note: "The following are authentic copies of sundry papers which  Col. Isaac Hayne, two days before his execution, delivered to a friend with an injunction...".
Col. Isaac Hayne was one of the most prominent Americans to be executed by the British during the Revolutionary War. He commanded an American raid which captured Brigadier-General Andrew Williamson, an American Loyalist. Colonel Nisbet Balfour, the British commander in Charleston during the 1781 siege of Charleston, fearing that Williamson would he hanged as a traitor, sent a column to intercept the raiding party. The interception was successful. There a skirmish resulting in the defeat of the raiding party, the release of Williamson and the capture of Hayne.
Isaac Hayne, although a prisoner of war, was sentenced to death by hanging by the British because in the opinion of the British court martial he had broken his earlier parole not to take up arms against the Crown.
Pages 2 and 3 are almost entirely filled with Revolutionary War reports, including further comments on the execution of Col. Hayne. Much talk of the Southern campaign with mention of Gen. Greene, General Washington, General James Clinton, General Marion, and more. One item dated Oct. 3 notes: "We hear that general Washington began his operations against York, about the 25th ult., & that two French sixty-fours have forced their way up the river some distance above York." It would be two weeks later that Cornwallis would surrender to Washington here at Yorktown.
A great wealth of fine and historic content.
Four pages, never bound nor trimmed, mild wear at the two folds, some light browning & damp staining.

Background: The execution of Colonel Isaac Hayne on August 4, 1781, holds exceptional historical significance and rarity as one of only two high-ranking American officers executed by summary hanging during the Revolutionary War—alongside Nathan Hale—making it a defining legal and human tragedy of the Southern Theater. What renders Hayne’s case particularly notable and controversial was the sheer moral dilemma behind his actions: forced to take an oath of allegiance to King George III under extreme duress in order to secure medical aid for his family during a deadly smallpox epidemic that claimed his wife and child, Hayne rejoined the Patriot army only after British authorities reneged on their verbal guarantee that he would never be required to bear arms against his countrymen. The British denial of a standard court-martial or formal trial, opting instead for a brief "court of inquiry" that denied him defense counsel or witnesses before sending him to the gallows at Charleston’s Royal Exchange, transformed Hayne into an instant martyr; the severe outrage across the colonies directly galvanized over 2,000 South Carolinians to join General Nathanael Greene’s Continental forces before the pivotal Battle of Eutaw Springs and ignited a fierce national legal debate in the British House of Lords over the military's summary treatment of paroled combatants.