Hancock, John

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Hancock, John

HANCOCK, JOHN. (1737–1793). Signer. Massachusetts. Born on 12 January 1737 in Braintree, Massachusetts, the son of a minister, John Hancock was orphaned early in life and adopted by his uncle, Thomas Hancock, the richest merchant in Boston. He graduated from Harvard College in 1754 and inherited his uncle's business at the age of twenty-seven in 1764, just as the economy sank into a depression after the end of the final French and Indian War. Four years later the Liberty affair rocketed Hancock into prominence as a victim of the overzealous enforcement of imperial customs regulations. He was elected a Boston selectman (1765–1774) and a member of the General Court (1766–1774), roles in which he displayed a keen political sense that made him a leader who could be trusted to be radical only when reason had failed. He could be a rabble-rouser when necessary (on 5 March 1774 he delivered the annual oration commemorating the victims of the Boston "Massacre") but generally used his considerable economic clout and social position in more subtle ways to support American rights.

He was elected the first president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in October 1774 and was also chairman of the Committee of Safety, which had authority to call out the militia. He and Samuel Adams were specifically excluded from General Thomas Gage's offer of amnesty to rebels (12 June 1775) because their offenses were "of too flagitious a nature." Hancock was a member of the Continental Congress from 1775 to 1780 and its president from 24 May 1775 until 29 October 1777. Vanity led him to seek appointment as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and he felt insulted when the delegates chose Washington instead. But his inclination to suffer politically convenient bouts of ill health would have limited his effectiveness in the field, and he had to take consolation in the fact that, as presiding officer of Congress, he signed the Declaration of Independence first and most prominently. After resigning the presidency for reasons of health, he lost interest in Congress (which had elected the able Henry Laurens to succeed him) and spent much of his time thereafter in Boston. As major general of the Massachusetts militia, he commanded six thousand Massachusetts troops in the operations against Newport, Rhode Island, in the summer of 1778, where he played only a minor role in the failure of the Franco-American attack.

On 1 September 1780 he became the first governor of Massachusetts under the new state constitution. In the throes of a sinking postwar economy and rising popular unrest, he resigned the governorship after a well-timed attack of gout on 29 January 1785, and was out of office during Shays's Rebellion in the winter of 1785–1786. He returned to the governorship in 1787 and pardoned the Shaysites. Although elected president of the state convention to ratify the federal Constitution in 1788, Hancock withdrew with another attack of gout. Despite some reservations about the extent of federal power, Hancock favored ratification, and with the issue in doubt, he returned to the convention and spoke in support of the document, thus playing a major role in winning ratification by a vote of 187 to 176. As William Fowler writes, "this was Hancock's finest moment, for without the support of Massachusetts the entire constitutional effort might have failed" ("John Hancock," American National Biography). Reelected governor, he was in his ninth term when he died at the age of 56.

"A moderate man who loved to court popularity," as Fowler describes him, Hancock was a pivotal figure promoting unity and harmony at the center of American politics from the start of the resistance to Britain to the establishment of the new republic.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allan, Herbert S. John Hancock, Patriot in Purple. New York: Macmillan, 1948.

Baxter, William T. The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–1775. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945.

Fowler, William M., Jr. "John Hancock." In American National Biography. 24 vols. Edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

??????. The Baron of Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

revised by Harold E. Selesky

Encyclopedia of the American Revolution: Library of Military History