Note 11 — HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

A similar debt of reparation is still owed by America to the memory of Silas Deane. As his part in the great conflict was closely interwoven with that of Beaumarchais, the suspicions that fell upon one were necessarily shared by the other—and both rested under the same impossibility of justifying themselves before the world. The publication of the French archives has done for both men what they could not do for themselves, and though the treatment accorded Silas Deane by Congress drove him to such despondency that he subsequently lost faith in the American cause, no shadow rests upon the patriotism which inspired his early efforts in that cause. Charlemagne Tower, Jr., in his The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution has given to the public all the essential documents which show the claim to gratitude which Silas Deane has upon the American people.