Historian Milton Van Vlack has been on a not-so-secret mission for 50-plus years: bring the truth about Silas Deane's life and activities during the Revolutionary War to light and expose the lies. Was he really a traitor or did his contemporaries conspire to take the man down?

His newly-printed biography, “Silas Deane Revolutionary War Diplomat and Politician,” his labor of love come to fruition, explores that question, and many others.

Van Vlack first became aware of Deane while he was a student at Bates College, working on his thesis “John Adams and the Peace Negotiations of 1783.” His curiosity about this Groton, Conn., native evolved into a mission, an unspoken vow that grew as the decades passed. 

Over the years, among his fellow historians and friends, Van Vlack became known as “The Deane Man.” He traveled to Paris, France, where Deane served as the United States' first secret agent in 1776 and where he and Benjamin Franklin's friendship would solidify.

In his travels Van Vlack uncovered letters written by Deane to family members, his wives, and his contemporaries. In these letters, Deane reveals his true nature; his love of country, and the exhaustion borne of his covert activities in France where he was to acquire military aid for Washington's army.

Van Vlack documents Deane's pivotal roles in these events in U.S. history: in the Battle of Saratoga and the taking of Fort Ticonderoga; his success in securing military aid for Washington's army; his critical role in the signing of the American-Franco Peace Treaty of 1778; and as the architect of the first draft of the Articles of Confederation.

Two Revolutionary War issues explored by Van Vlack, not noted by other historians and authors, are the influence and roles of Freemasonry and the use of secret intelligence in America's fight for independence from England.

In 1840, Deane's granddaughter, Philaura Deane Alden re-petitioned Congress to review her grandfather's case. On August 10, 1842, Congress determined that a former audit on Deane was “exparte erroneous and a gross injustice” to him.

Van Vlack's biography of Deane takes events in the man's life in chronological order. It includes images of letters, photographs and quotations out of communiques between some of our country's most notable champions of independence.

Once the manuscript was finished and readied for sending to publishers Van Vlack waited one year before getting a copy of the cover in the mail from McFarland & Company Inc., Publishers.

“I was really starting to wonder if I would finish it for a while there,” Van Vlack said, laughing. “I'm very pleased with how it turned out and the cover is more than I hoped it would be.”

Van Vlack earned a master's degree in history from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and went on to become a social studies and U.S. history teacher, instructor and speaker/lecturer of life in the 18th century. His focus has always been on three subjects of the time period: New England architecture, furniture, and the lives of Revolutionary War icons.

He has written for media trade magazines and produced two extensive articles on Deane's careers in the iron industry. All of his credits are too numerous to list here, but this most recent achievement Van Vlack began shaping and writing in earnest after his retirement in 1992.

The first print run of “Silas Deane Revolutionary War Diplomat and Politician,” was 7,500 copies in January of this year, and Van Vlack has learned another 7,500 have already been printed. The list price is $40. The book is being sold at www.mcfarlandbooks.com, Barnes & Noble, other large independent book stores and on Amazon.com.  It will be available in Damariscotta, and hopefully, Boothbay soon.

Van Vlack dedicated the biography to his late wife, Janis Kisner Van Vlack, who assisted him in his research and supported him in his mission for the 54 years of their marriage.

What will he do now?

“Just from the index alone there are many other books I could pull out of there; I'm just not as young as I used to be,” Van Vlack said.