A Note on Silas Deane's Death

Abstract

S ILAS Deane's death as he embarked for America aboard the Boston Packet in September I789 received little notice. In the early years of the Revolution, however, Deane had been prominent in Connecticut politics and in the Continental Congress, which had appointed him one of three American commissioners to France. Later, when Congress requested his return to the United States, Deane became the center of a divisive controversy over his private commercial activities in France.' Just before the French-American victory at Yorktown, he further alienated himself from his compatriots by advocating reconciliation with Great Britain and renunciation of the ties with France.2 His fall from grace now complete, Deane moved from France to Ghent and in I783 to London, where he was to remain until his death. He retained few close contacts with Americans except for Edward Bancroft, a former business partner, a spy, and a faithful pensioner of George III. Deane led a desolate existence in London for his last years, but he could not die without ultimately becoming a subject of controversy. In a series of articles Julian Boyd has traced the complex relationship between Deane and Bancroft. Boyd suggests that Deane did not commit suicide as was believed at the time, but that Bancroft, an expert on poisons, administered a lethal dose of laudanum to Deane just before he boarded ship.' In a penetrating analysis of Deane's and Bancroft's war-