Deane, Silas

DEANE, SILAS. (1737–1789). Continental congressman, first American diplomat abroad. Connecticut. The son of a blacksmith, Silas Deane was born in Groton, Connecticut, on 24 December 1737 and graduated from Yale in 1758. Moving to Wethersfield, Deane taught school and studied law, gaining admission to the bar in 1763. Deane rose quickly to prominence, aided by a pair of advantageous marriages. In 1763 he wed a well-to-do widow, Mehitabel Webb, in 1763. She died in 1767, and two years later Deane married Elizabeth Ebbets, the granddaughter of former Governor Gordon Saltonstall. Deane became active in the Susquehannah Company, which sought the expansion of Connecticut into the western territories through energetic land speculation. First elected to the General Assembly in 1768, Deane became a leader of the Patriot movement in Connecticut, serving as secretary of the colony's Committee of Correspondence, and was selected to serve in the first Continental Congress in 1774. The following year, Congress appointed Deane to the committee organizing the American navy. Deane gained added renown for his support of Ethan Allen's capture of Fort Ticonderoga.

Deane proved less popular in his home state. According to Deane's friend, Governor Jonathan Trumbull, the

assembly did not trust Deane, and so refused to re-elect him to Congress. Deane, who had aligned himself with the commercial interests of New York and Philadelphia, had entered into a number of deals with a wily financier, Robert Morris, and so he stayed on in Philadelphia. The visit of Achard de Bonvouloir to Philadelphia late in 1775 led Congress's Secret Committee, charged with acquiring munitions from abroad, to decide that an agent should be sent to France to explore the possibilities of military assistance. They awarded this assignment to Deane, even though he did not speak French, and offered him a five percent commission on all goods he acquired during the assignment. Seeing his opportunity, Deane entered into a number of secret partnerships with various merchants and political leaders hoping to profit from supplying the new Continental Army. As Deane said, he was "involved in one scheme and adventure after another, so as to keep my mind in constant agitation."

As luck would have it, Congress instructed him to arrange a meeting in Paris with his old friend, Edward Bancroft. Deane did so, passing American and French secrets to Bancroft with a view to making their fortune in trade, purchasing supplies for Congress, and engaging in land speculation and many other forms of profiteering and double dealing. What Deane did not know, and what the world did not learn until sixty years after Bancroft's death, was that Bancroft was a double agent serving the British.

Deane sailed for Europe in April 1776 with instructions from two separate Congressional committees, both of them secret. For the Commercial Committee, he was one of five merchants authorized to buy American produce with Congressional funds, to ship this merchandise abroad, and to bring back supplies needed by the colonies; Deane was the European agent for this traffic. The second committee, called the Secret Committee, instructed Deane to buy clothing and equipment for 25,000 men and to purchase artillery and munitions. He was to do this on credit, if possible. He also was to explore the possibilities of French recognition and an alliance.

Hortalez & Cie was the first fruit of Deane's efforts. French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, acting through his agent Pierre Beaumarchais, created Roderigue Hortalez and Company to secretly funnel munitions and other supplies to the Americans. Although details of this secret operation were passed promptly to Lord Stormont (David Murray) in Paris and to the British authorities in London, Deane and Bancroft withheld critical information about shipments in which they had a stake. Thus, vital supplies continued to flow to America. Congress had directed Deane to take Arthur Lee into his confidence, but Deane did not do so, turning Lee into a bitter enemy of Deane's. Lee also, accurately as it turned out, accused Bancroft of being a spy.

The matter of foreigners in the American army brings up the name of Silas Deane most frequently in the pages of military history. As early as 2 December 1775, Congress had asked the Secret Committee to find four "able and skillful engineers" for the Continental army, but Deane went far beyond his authority in making contracts with foreign officers who wanted Continental commissions. He had no qualifications for sorting out the real soldiers from the mere opportunists, but went right ahead and sent a stream of ambitious European officers to Philadelphia. Some of these officers were extremely competent, most notably the self-proclaimed Baron Johann de Kalb and the Marquis de Lafayette (Gilbert du Montier), but most barely rose above the level of blowhards. Henry Laurens was to write later that Deane apparently "would not say nay to any Frenchman who called himself Count or Chevalier" and solicited a high commission in the American army.

In September 1776 Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee to form a committee with Deane to continue the mission originally entrusted to Deane alone. This led to the French Alliance, which Congress ratified on 4 May 1778, and ended Deane's diplomatic mission. Recalled ostensibly to report to Congress on affairs in Europe, but actually to answer charges raised by Lee, he stirred up a lively controversy that is an important part of the story of Hortalez & Cie. Deane also was attacked at this time for showing poor judgment in letting so many foreign adventurers come to America.

After two years in America, Deane returned to Europe as a private citizen to pursue a series of nefarious affairs with Bancroft. In 1781, he wrote to friends in America of his failing confidence in the cause of Independence and advocated an accommodation with Britain. He sent these through Bancroft, who showed them to the British authorities. With a view to giving these letters more credence, and helping their own cause, the British pretended that Deane's letters had been intercepted, and they were published in Rivington's Gazette at about the time General Charles Cornwallis surrendered. Now accused of treason in addition to the older charges of profiteering, dishonest financial methods, and incompetence, Deane became an exile. Bankrupt, sick in spirit and in body, he lived for a short time in Ghent and for a few years in England. He died at the start of a voyage to Canada, on 23 September 1789. His reputation was cleared to some degree when Congress voted his heirs $37,000 in 1842 as partial restitution for his war expenses. At this time the audit of his accounts that had been made under Arthur Lee's direction was called "a gross injustice to Silas Deane." Despite his

personal corruption, Deane had done an invaluable service to the American cause by helping to transport thousands of firearms and tons of powder for use by U.S. forces.

SEE ALSO Bancroft, Edward; Bonvouloir;Hortalez & Cie.

                              revised by Michael Bellesiles