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Silas Deane

He was a diplomat and politician, born in Groton, Connecticut, the son of Silas Dean, a second-generation blacksmith, and Sarah Barker. He was the eldest surviving child in a family deeply rooted in the agricultural and artisanal endeavors of the stable community on the banks of the Thames. His father served one term in the colonial assembly and saw his son through Yale by 1758. Soon thereafter the younger Silas moved to Wethersfield, a more vibrant community on the Connecticut River. There he taught school by day and studied law by night. He also added the final e to his surname, and after the death of both parents in 1760 and 1761 brought his six siblings to live with him. By 1763 he had passed the bar and solidified his position by marrying a widow, Mehitable Nott Webb, who brought her five children to the marriage; the couple had one of their own. The ambitious Deane also gained capital from the Webbs' mercantile business as well as their contacts beyond the community.

Within two years of Mehitable's death in 1767 of tuberculosis, Deane made his second brilliant match by marrying Elizabeth Saltonstall Ebbets, granddaughter of Gurdon Saltonstall, a former governor of Connecticut. Through this match Deane gained entry into wider political circles. He was elected one of Wethersfield's two deputies to the General Assembly in 1768 and again from 1772 to 1775. The Deane-Webb-Saltonstall network, however, was fractured when the Webbs sued Deane over estate problems. The series of acrimonious intrafamilial suits concerning his handling of Webb funds and real estate hindered Deane's rise in affluence, power, and trust. Settlement did not come until the 1790s. Here, as in later controversies, he appeared opportunistic, clever, and amoral.

Deane also rose in colonial politics with support from the Saltonstalls. His connections to the Susquehannah Company were equally important. This group of merchants was formed to use the sea-to-sea clause in Connecticut's royal charter of 1662 as a pretext to claim land in western Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley. By 1774, with the support of the powerful Trumbull faction, Deane aided the company's cause by becoming the leading expansionist in the colony. He also ensured that Wethersfield stood at the forefront of efforts to aid Boston after its port was closed in 1774. As a result of these efforts he was named secretary of the Connecticut Committee of Correspondence. As representative of the upriver and eastern interests as well as a businessman, he joined Roger Sherman of New Haven and Eliphalet Dyer of Fairfield in 1774 as Connecticut's delegates appointed to the First Continental Congress.

With his attendance at the congress in the summer of 1774 a new stage of Deane's career opened. In the first congress as well as its successor in 1775, he quickly affiliated himself with like-minded men of commerce, most especially those from the middle colonies. No one doubted his patriotism or his keen eye for mer= cantile connections as he served on committees concerned with arming the Continental army and provisioning a nascent navy. He added to his reputation and gained the nickname "Ticonderoga" when in 1775 he authorized £300 to fund Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen's expedition to capture Fort Ticonderoga. Deane basked in the resulting stunning success. The Connecticut Assembly, however, did not nominate him for a third term in October 1775. Apparently Sherman and Deane did not get along, and Sherman had more clout in the assembly. Deane's patron, Governor Jonathan Trumbull (1710-1785), told the irritated Deane that the Connecticut Assembly viewed him as "unteachable and incorrigible."

Rather than return home, Deane filled out his term. Scheming with internationally connected Robert Morris (1734-1806), netted him some assignments early in 1776. He became, in his own words, "involved in one scheme and adventure after another, so as to keep my mind in constant agitation." The Secret Committee (formed in 1775 to seek munitions and other supplies from abroad) contracted with him at 5 percent commission to go to France to purchase goods for trade with the Indians. Deane also entered into partnership with a number of delegates who sought to profit from international trade. Moreover, the Committee of Secret Correspondence (named to coordinate communications with American agents and informants overseas) dispatched him to France as their agent "to transact such Business, commercial and political .. . in Behalf and by Authority of the Congress of the Thirteen United Colonies." Primarily he was to ascertain French reaction to the move toward American independence and to seek arms. Deane and his partners passed on their losses to the government in order to maximize profits. (They put private shipments on board vessels chartered to Congress. If the vessel sunk or was captured by the British, they sought restitution from Congress.)

Deane's mission to France, in its initial stage, lasted from July to December 1776; he remained there as joint commissioner until the spring of 1778. The first official representative of the new nation abroad, he knew no French, was soon surrounded by British spies and French intriguers, and received few instructions from Congress. When the word spread of the Declaration of Independence, Deane was perplexed for he did not know if Congress wished to pursue connections with the court of Louis XVI. He was unable to secure credit to purchase goods for Indian trade but in July was received by the foreign minister, Charles Gravier Vergennes. This seasoned and industrious diplomat pushed a policy of rearmament and revenge.

Vergennes chose Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, playwright and courtier, as agent to funnel aid to the American rebellion. The conduit was Roderigue Hortalez and Company, which was loaned royal funds to purchase obsolete arms from government arsenals. These were to be sold on credit to Deane and Congress. By March 1777 the Frenchman and Deane had chartered merchantmen to convoy war material from royal arsenals to America. The weapons were rushed to New York to aid in defeating the British at Saratoga in the fall of 1777. Less successful were Deane's efforts to repay Hortalez. Sufficient American tobacco, as remittance, did not come to Beaumarchais. Arthur Lee of Virginia, Congress's agent in London, accused Deane of placing personal profit before public service. He visited Deane in August and claimed that the Hortalez shipments were in fact gifts from Louis XVI. Deane wrote Morris, "Mt seems to me the present opportunity of improving our fortunes ought not to be lost, especially as the very means of doing it will contribute to the arms shipments." Vergennes, hiding behind the guise of neutrality, was in no position to acknowledge any form of governmental assistance and so could not clarify the matter. Congress later found Lee's interpretation convenient and withheld payments to Hortalez.

In the long run the Hortalez shipments proved to be Deane's most controversial accomplishment. Yet in the short run he exceeded his instructions and thus reaped mounting criticism from Congress that ended in his recall, voted by Congress on 21 November 1777. In the last five months of 1776 Deane had persistently badgered the cautious Vergennes to recognize the independent United States. Worse, he had contracted with myriad French army officers for the Continental army. These uneven appointments were vigorously resisted by American generals and politicians. For every Baron de Kalb or Marquis de Lafayette he helped to recruit, there were more numerous obnoxious line officers, such as Major Philippe C. Du Coudray. Also vexing in America were reports of Deane's complicity in a scheme to replace army commander George Washington with Charles-Francois, duc de Broglie, head of the king's own secret diplomatic service. From his Paris base Deane also recruited a pyromaniac to set fire to the British naval stores in Portsmouth, England, in the winter of 1776-1777. This mission misfired, and Vergennes was chagrined by the American's efforts to jeopardize France's neutrality.

In addition to congressional responsibilities, Deane entered into personal schemes with both French and American speculators. Although some revolutionaries such as Samuel Adams and Richard Henry Lee praised virtue and damned profit, Deane blurred the line between public and private interests by using his knowledge of the international scene to manipulate the London stock and insurance markets. To do this he employed in July 1776 Edward Bancroft, who, unbeknownst to Deane, was a double agent. In his role as Deane's secretary, Bancroft used government intelligence to play the market odds on when war might break out between Britain and France. He also compromised the secrecy of French-American negotiations. Arthur Lee and his brothers suspected Bancroft but could never prove that he was a spy. They also claimed that Deane cleared a profit of £60,000 from stock jobbing, although Deane maintained that his adventures had balanced profits against losses. A true accounting has never been made because of insufficient records.

Spy in France? (24 December 1737 - 23 September 1789) With Franklin came Arthur Lee who had been an American spy in England. Lee disliked the quiet Deane, openly accusing him of using American funds for his own purpose and for hiring a secretary, Edward Bancroft, whom Lee accused of being a British spy. Franklin took Deane's side. Deane, in turn, believed Bancroft loyal to the Revolution which he was not, but it would many years before the crafty Bancroft was identified as a British agent. Franklin and Deane successfully negotiated an alliance with France in 1778 which ultimately decided the American War of Independence in favor of the revolutionaries. When Deane returned to America he was not hailed as a hero but as a thief. Lee again accused him of appropriating American funds for his own use. Though Deane was eventually exonerated, his reputation was ruined by Lee's accusations. In 1780, Deane returned to Europe where he angrily denounced his American enemies and urged his friends to reunite with England. These letters were published and caused Deane widespread condemnation in America. Upon hearing that the Constitution of the United States of America had been adopted, Deane decided to return to his native land. On the voyage to America, however, he died under mysterious circumstances. Some reports had it that he feared more public abuse and committed suicide. In 1842, Congress reexamined Deane's significant role in the Revolution and then posthumously absolved him of any wrongdoing and gave his heirs $37,000 in compensation.

In late December 1776 Deane progressed to another stage in his diplomatic career. He was yoked with Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), who arrived from Philadelphia, and with Arthur Lee, who came over from London. Franklin, engaged in wide-ranging efforts to cultivate French opinion, genially left the details and commercial affairs of the Paris commission in the hands of Deane and his European cronies. Lee, when he was not dispatched in quests of militia diplomacy to Spain or Prussia, grew increasingly alienated, believing his compatriots less zealous and competent than himself. Despite growing dissension between Lee and his two colleagues, they managed to hold together through 1777.

At the end of the year Vergennes instructed his representative, Conrad Alexandre Gerard, to negotiate with the trio on their long-sought objective: a French- American alliance. By 6 February 1778 they had negotiated two alliances, one commercial and one military and political. The first pact was founded on the concept of commercial reciprocity. The second agreed that neither the United States nor France would quit the war until America had achieved independence and that neither ally would negotiate separately with the British. Within a month Deane, receiving news of his recall by Congress, joined Gerard in crossing the Atlantic. Gerard had been named France's first minister plenipotentiary to the United States. The American must have felt he had gained his diplomatic goal.

In fact Deane's life now entered its most controversy-filled stage. While Gerard was feted upon his arrival, Deane faced repeated frustrations at the hands of Congress. In September 1777 it had repudiated Deane's contracts with French officers and two months later voted for his recall but failed to tell him why. In retrospect Deane could be seen as the victim of both factionalism within Congress and of the lack of clear communications between Congress and its envoys. In Congress Deane was criticized by his colleagues from Connecticut, by James Lovell and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, and by Richard Henry Lee. Deane's champions came from the more commercial middle states; they rallied behind James Duane of New York. Ultimately, however, the vote for Deane's recall passed without dissent. Between 14 July and 5 December 1778 he waited in Philadelphia for a congressional audience. This was soon after R. H. Lee received first word from his brothers in Europe of possible wrongdoing by Deane. It was September before Congress openly considered substantive charges of misapplication of funds and dissension among the American trio in France.

Finally, in total frustration, Deane published a combative address in the Pennsylvania Gazette on 5 December 1778. This open public assault on the Lees opened a breach among the patriotic forces and precipitated a major war in the local press and a like cleavage in Congress. On Deane's side stood the more moderate, commercial-minded, and middle-states politicians. Deane's enemies rallied around the so-called Old Radicals of the Adams-Lee axis, those who had been in the forefront of early agitation and who emphasized a moral dimension in the Revolution. Gerard helped to widen the fissure, for he believed the Adams-Lee forces were anti-French. As the animosities played out, Congress refused to accept Deane's accounts, but they neither charged nor released him. Ultimately, after thirteen months, he was merely discharged. In 1779 Deane had the satisfaction of knowing that the Deanites gained revenge by unseating Arthur Lee and two cronies from their diplomatic posts.

Deane never went to Connecticut in the period from 1778 to 1780. He had arranged a network of kin from Connecticut to Virginia to the Caribbean to handle trade. He was determined to return to Europe in 1780 so as to avoid political infighting, to vindicate himself by settling his accounts, and most importantly to recoup his fortune. He failed in all three efforts. Without credit or capital he could make no headway in a scheme to supply masts to the allied navies. His connections with Robert Morris and other Pennsylvania notables led to ill-fated land speculations in the Illinois and Wabash companies. His unsettled accounts proved as vexing. In fact, it was not until 1841 that Congress guaranteed to Deane's heirs $37,000. Disillusionment led Deane to infamy. In the spring of 1781 a series of ill-timed "intercepted letters" were published by the Loyalist press in New York City. Some American patriots believed Deane had sold out to the British; most historians concur. These published missives voiced Deane's views that Americans should forsake alliances with France and seek reconciliation with Britain. At best he was labeled a defeatist; more often he was linked with Benedict Arnold as a traitor.

In 1781 Deane moved to Ghent, where he could live more cheaply than in Paris. By March 1783 he was living in London. His enemies joyfully reported his apostasy: he lived with a prostitute, and thieves stole his papers and in Paris offered them for sale to Thomas Jefferson. Edward Bancroft appeared to offer financial and medical assistance. Ever the grand schemer, Deane in 1785 began plans for a canal from Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence River. In 1789 he boarded ship to return to America to pursue this and other adventures. Within four hours his illness forced the ship back to port in Deal, where he soon died. Contemporaries, and later detectives, have variously attributed Deane's death to stroke, tuberculosis, suicide, or murder. Bancroft, a known handler of drugs, has often been implicated because Deane's revelation of earlier espionage might have jeopardized the double agent's comfortable career in Britain.

While many of his peers in the American Revolution found their careers enhanced by the experience, Deane did not. His star seemed on the ascendancy in the early stages as he parlayed firm provincial political connections and entry through Robert Morris to the world of Atlantic merchants. Despite ambition and savvy his diplomatic assignments in France netted him frustrations, which he traced to his rivals, the Lees. Congressional debates and votes in 1778-1779 over the Deane-Lee imbroglio as well as his appeal for popular support broke the harmony of the original patriot leadership. They also hastened Deane's personal and financial depressions.

John Arthur Garraty. . Oxford University Press. Volume 6; 1998.

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