Silas Deane

Silas Deane (born Dec. 24, 1737, Groton, Conn.—died Sept. 23, 1789, at sea near Deal, Kent, Eng.) was the first U.S. diplomat sent abroad (1776), who helped secure much-needed French aid for the American Revolutionary cause.

Admitted to the bar in 1761, Deane served as a delegate from Connecticut to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia (1774–76). Congress then sent him to France as a secret agent to obtain financial and military assistance and to investigate the possibility of an alliance. He obtained and sent arms valued at more than 6,000,000 livres to America, an important contribution to the decisive victory over the British at Saratoga (October 1777). In November 1777 Congress recalled Deane, but before leaving Paris he signed the treaties of commerce and alliance (Feb. 6, 1778) that he and two other commissioners, Arthur Lee and Benjamin Franklin, had negotiated. Upon his return he was accused of embezzlement and disloyalty on the basis of insinuations by Lee that Deane was charging for supplies that France intended as gifts to America. Although never proved, the accusations led to his ruin.

Deane returned to France in 1780 as a private citizen and prepared letters to old friends in America attacking the French alliance and recommending a reconciliation with England. When the letters were published in The Royal Gazette, a Tory paper in New York (1781), he was denounced as a traitor. He began an exile, first in Ghent and then in London, where in 1784 he published his defense in An Address to the Free and Independent Citizens of the United States. Five years later Deane set sail for America but died on board under mysterious circumstances. He never admitted doing wrong and in 1842 was finally exonerated by Congress.