It was during his tenure as President of Delaware that the American Revolution officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September 1783. In an attempt to solve one problem resulting from the war, Van Dyke proposed and carried out a plan to pay Delaware's portion of the war debt. Another difficult unresolved war problem was the fate of loyalist Cheney Clow. Arrested in 1778, tried for and acquitted of treason in 1782, he was then charged with the murder of a member of the posse sent to capture him in 1778. Though there was no evidence that Clow actually killed the man, in May 1783 a jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. Unable politically to pardon Clow, but aware that many responsible people, including Caesar Rodney's brother, Thomas Rodney, believed the man innocent, Van Dyke postponed the execution indefinitely.