Silas Deane

Silas Deane (1737-1789), American Revolution diplomat, who served as liaison to France. He was born December 24, 1737, in Groton, Connecticut, and educated at Yale College (now Yale University). He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1774, serving until the Congress sent him to France in 1776 to seek aid for the American revolutionary armies and to explore the possibility of a French alliance. Deane was largely responsible for the recruitment of foreign volunteer officers, including the Marquis de Lafayette, Thomas Conway, Baron de Kalb, and Casimir Pulaski, and for the sending of supplies that proved invaluable at the Battle of Saratoga (1777). After that battle, French aid to America was formally negotiated by a treaty (1778) to which Deane was one of the signatories. Soon thereafter he returned to America to answer charges that he had mishandled funds. He was permitted to return to France in 1781 to obtain evidence in his defense. In that year, however, Deane wrote a letter in which he expressed doubt concerning the possibility of American success in the war; the document was published, making his immediate return to America impossible.

Deane lived in England thereafter and in 1784 wrote a defense of his views, An Address to the Free and Independent Citizens of the United States of North America. Five years later, while on a ship going to the U.S., he died under unexplained circumstances (September 23, 1789). His memory was vindicated by Congress in 1842.