John Hancock’s Big Signature
On this date in 1775, John Hancock was elected president of the Second Continental Congress. He replaced Virginian Peyton Randolph, who suffered from gout. A vain and ambitious man in all pursuits, Hancock coveted the presidency of the congress even though it offered no particularly special powers beyond responsibility for keeping order in often raucous meetings. Hancock and Sam Adams were the two most wanted men in the colonies by the time of the Congress. The two men, eventually joined on their journey to Philadelphia by John Adams, had to hurry out of Massachusetts in disguise to attend the Congress. Had they been captured by the British, they would have been hanged.
Hancock’s vanity and ambition likely trace from his background. Along with the Fairfaxes of Virginia and the Schuylers of New York, he was one of the wealthiest men in the colonies and probably the most liquid. His fortune stemmed from his uncle, Thomas Hancock, the leading Boston merchant of his day. After John’s father, a minister, died, Thomas raised John as his own son and trained him to run the family business. John took over the firm at age 27 upon his uncle’s death. The resulting profits allowed him to dream big and dress extremely well. Hancock was something of a dandy. His dreams, however, have far outlived his fashion reputation.
The Boston merchant found trouble with the British by the 1760’s, when his boat The Liberty was impounded for smuggling. Hancock wasn’t too fond of taxes or trade limitations the British imposed on goods coming into the colonies. Hancock was raised to the boss of the business. It irked him for anyone to tell him what to do, even the king. It was not long before he found a kindred spirit in Sam Adams, a local loudmouth. The two men from opposite ends of the economic spectrum must have made an odd sight at the time. John Hancock, the wealthiest merchant in a city of merchants who lived in the finest home in Boston situated at the highest point on Beacon Hill and Sam Adams, a man of the Boston street and underbelly, who could barely keep a roof over his family’s head despite his Harvard pedigree. Yet, the two men made for a potent team in championing the cause for liberty, Hancock provided the means for insurrection in money and material and Adams provided the brawn.
One would think that a man with so much to lose would keep his involvement in treason on the down low. Hancock wasn’t built like that. He wanted credit. He made little attempt to conceal his involvement in local shenanigans against the British. In fact, by the time of Lexington and Concord, the British force sent to confiscate a cache of weapons also had orders to arrest Hancock and Adams. The two men had been tipped off and made themselves scarce. The start of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia two weeks later gave them an excellent reason to leave the area.
Hancock was elect president of the Congress two weeks into it. Peyton Randolph, a portly man, had to return home to Virginia complaining of gout. Hancock suffered from the same affliction (as did Ben Franklin), but he was not about to let some discomfort remove him from organizing a colony-wide revolt along the lines of the one he and Sam Adams had started in Boston. It seems Hancock only expected to preside over the Congress for a short time. He wanted to be named commanding general of the Continental Army. He had no formal military training but neither did the only delegate who wore a uniform to the congress every day, George Washington.
In the end, Hancock’s ambition to lead the army lost to John Adams’ politicking to name Washington General. The astute John Adams knew that Virginia had to join the rebellion that was localized to Boston up that point. They would not do so with a Bostonian in command. After the loss, Hancock continued as president, dressing fancily to every meeting, banging the gavel and then, most famously, signing his name in the largest font possible on the Declaration of Independence over a year after he lost the election to become general. A big signature for a giant of American history.