Dr. Bancroft's The Strange Death Of Silas Deane

When thinking about history in the past, I have always believed that it was straightforward. I knew that if I wanted to know something, I had to find the sources that contained the information. I had never thought about how that information came to be or why the author chose to include the information that he did. Reading “The Strange Death of Silas Deane,” helped me to see that everything is not as straightforward as it seems, and in order for you to completely have a full picture of something, you need to know all the information that is surrounding it. When reading, “The Strange Death of Silas Deane,” if you were to take a straightforward approach, you would have a depressed Silas finally on his way back home after about ten years of

Bancroft’s importance seems to be of even more importance than originally thought. At first Bancroft seemed to just be an assistant and friend to Silas, but as one digs deeper there appeared to be a lot more there. A brief summary of Bancroft, adapted from the reading of “The Strange Death of Silas Deane,” was that Bancroft was a physician who spent a lot of time studying exotic plants and animals. He gained the attention of Benjamin Franklin who later got Bancroft involved in politics. It was through politics that Deane and Bancroft teamed up. Bancroft was then acting as a double agent. He was providing Deane the information that he needed, but he was also acting as a spy for England. Davidson and Lytle said, “Bancroft would be Deane’s “private secretary” when needed in Paris and a spy for the Americans when in England,” this is clearly identifying Bancroft’s double agent status. Deane and Bancroft managed to use their political power to make money off of the insurance markets with the intel that they were gathering. Davidson and Lytle explains that “Deane was in charge of concluding the French alliance, …Britain would be forced to declare war on France. Bancroft hurried across to London …took out the proper insurance before the news went public. The profits shared by the two men…approximately £10,000,” and this helps to reinforce the idea that the two were in it together. This ordeal caused Deane a lot of hardships which was one of the