Silas Deane Chapter Summary

This chapter differentiated what history is from what people view history as by delving into the mystery shrouding the death of Silas Deane and establishing the ways historians can use evidence to support arguments. The authors’ thesis was that Silas Deane’s death is an example of why history is not a recollection of the past but also the reconstruction and analysis of events.

The first key point the authors made is that history cannot be fully understood by knowing the presented events. The chapter proceeded to introduce Silas Deane’s story; he was a blacksmith’s son who later pursued politics, gaining a reputation for being ambitious. However, he became entangled in controversies and finally moved to England. His friend, Bancroft, sometimes

lent him money. In 1789, Deane boarded the Boston Packet to return to the U.S. But on September 22, he fell ill while on board and died that day.
The facts became muddled once historians began attempting to put together a complete story of his life.

For instance, rumors arose that his death was a suicide through poison. Through these discrepancies, the authors pointed out that history is not a collection of data but the “act of selecting, analyzing, and writing about the past” (xxi). They introduced ways to do so, like selecting the best evidence and piecing them together to form cohesive arguments. Using those methods, they assessed that Deane had enthusiastic plans for the future and genuinely believed the controversy had died down, so they assumed that his death was not a suicide.

The authors moved on to Bancroft, who was a bright man and worked alongside Deane as a private secretary when needed in France and the two established their own private trade. They also gamboled. However, it was decades later when historians discovered that Bancroft was a double agent for the British. It was likely that Deane knew of

this.
The new information left historians with new theories. Deane could have committed suicide because of his guilt, but the authors quickly debunked this theory. Instead, they used a series of questions to show all the concerns Bancroft might have concerning Deane’s return to the U.S., resulting in a theory that Deane was poisoned by Bancroft, which is backed by Bancroft’s knowledge in poisons. The theory was used to further prove the necessity of historians because it would have never come to fruition if they did not dig deep enough in historical records.
This chapter’s thesis was in regards to evidence; value is never clear at first glance, and the earlier stages of research (selecting relevant information) requires as much heavy analysis and interpretation as later stages. This was one of the given reasons why history is separate from the past.
The example first introduced is Captain John Smith, who documented his life as one great adventure with several discrepancies from possible lies to the lack of other points of view.

This was contrasted against the records of pedestrian clerks, which revealed more knowledge when it is deeply analyzed. With this approach it was possible to create an idea of Virginian society during the early colonial years. Despite the predictions of several Englishmen, colonizing Virginia was incredibly difficult- many died at sea and the location for the colony was unhealthy and resulted in the death of over forty more people. Conditions only worsened in the winter. Until the arrival of Sandys a decade later, Jamestown was poor and barely populated. Sandys helped make the colony successful by offering property and land grants to attract investors for the Virginia Company and new settlers, introducing private property to Virginia. Additionally, Sandys and his friends made the colony a better place to live by setting laws in place and avoiding heavy taxes by providing land to pay off officials’

salaries.
By 1619, the company was booming and roughly a thousand people were immigrating to Virginia a year. However, the population was still around 700 three years later. The cause was kept from the public, but the colony couldn’t handle such a large population and disease only made the situation worse. The true problem, though, lay in corn. Laws showed that it was mandated for people to grow corn, suggesting some level of food shortage from the shift to tobacco as the preferred crop. The high mortality rates also harmed those of lower classes, especially the duty boys that were threatened by the work and harsh laws they were subject to. Even independent small planters were subject to the danger of servitude.
Slavery is more difficult to determine because the earliest records do not clarify whether the Africans brought to Virginia were servants or slaves. Additionally, the status of later Africans varied until the 1660s. There are two reasons for the slower development of slavery compared to other American colonies; the availability of slaves were relatively low because tobacco required less intensive land compared to the West Indies and servants were more convenient because of the high mortality rate and their cheaper price. Only when slaves became largely profitable did Virginia become a slave society, but that occurred in the 1680s and 1690s. Decades earlier, the price of tobacco fell and the chance for an easy fortune diminished. It is only because of historians that the time before then did not vanish as well.