John Hancock

“ John Hancock and Samuel Adams hear the drumbeat; Hancock seizes his gun.
“This is no place for you; you must go to a place of safety,” said Reverend Mr. Clark.
“Never will I turn my back to the redcoats,” said Hancock.
“The country will need your counsels. Others must meet the enemy face to face,” was the calm, wise reply of the patriotic minister.
Other friends expostulate; they cross the road and enter a thick wood crowning the hill.
“Stand your ground. If war is to come, let it begin here. Don’t fire till you are fired upon,” said Captain John Parker, walking along the lines of his company. ”

“ John Hancock’s coachman seizes every opportunity to bespatter us with mud; daily are we hooted by the unbreeched rebel brats; and narrowly, once, did our gray hairs escape the ignominy of tar and feathers. Alas! only that we cannot bear to die till the next royal governor comes over, we would fain be in our quiet grave.
Such an old man among new things are we who now hold at arm’s-length the rebel newspaper of the day. The very figure-head, for the thousandth time, elicits it groan of spiteful lamentation. ”

“ The unselfishness of the latter suggestion appealed to Hancock. To be the friend of humanity, to assist others—this is the highest ambition to which a man can aspire! And, of course, if one is pointed out on the street as the good Mr. Hancock it can not be helped. It is the penalty of well-doing.
So in order to give work to many and to promote the interests of Boston, a thriving city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, for all good men wish to build up the place in which they live, John Hancock was induced to embark in shipbuilding. ”

“ Having reached the summit of the hill, we come abreast of the five-and-a-half-acre pasture of Governor John Hancock, the first signer of the immortal Declaration of American Independence, extending from Mount Vernon Street to Joy Street, and northerly to Derne Street, embracing the Capitol lot, and also the reservoir lot, for which last two he paid, in 1752, the modest sum of eleven hundred dollars! It is now worth a thousand times as much. ”

“ And yet the keen intellect of Samuel Adams was not a thing to smile at. Any one who stood before him, face to face, felt the power of the man, and acknowledged it then and there, as we always do when we stand in the presence of a strong individuality. And this inward acknowledgment of worth was instinctively made by John Hancock, the biggest man in all Boston town.
John Hancock, through his genial, glowing personality, and his lavish spending of money, was very popular. He was being fed on flattery, and the more a man gets of flattery, once the taste is acquired, the more he craves. ”

“ After graduating from Harvard in 1754, he entered the mercantile house of his uncle, Thomas Hancock of Boston, who had adopted him, and on whose death, in 1764, he fell heir to a large fortune and a prosperous business. In 1765 he became a selectman of Boston, and from 1766 to 1772 was a member of the Massachusetts general court. An event which is thought to have greatly influenced Hancock’s subsequent career was the seizure of the sloop “Liberty” in 1768 by the customs officers for discharging, without paying the duties, a cargo of Madeira wine consigned to Hancock. ”

“ The Reverend John Hancock of Lexington had two sons. John Hancock (Number Two) became pastor of the church of the North Precinct of the town of Braintree, which afterwards was to be the town of Quincy.
The nearest neighbor to the village preacher was John Adams, shoemaker and farmer. Each Sunday in the amen corner of the Reverend John Hancock's meetinghouse was mustered the well washed and combed brood of Mr. and Mrs. Adams. Now, this John Adams had a son whom the Reverend John Hancock baptized, also named John, two years older than John, the son of the preacher. ”

“ One of these heads immediately arrests our attention. 264It is very handsome, and is set upon a fine, tall, gentlemanly figure,—both owned by one John Hancock from Boston, only thirty-nine years of age, of large wealth for those simple days honorably acquired by trade, of manners conspicuously high-bred, and with a soul that, like a lamp burning inside an alabaster vase, illuminates the beautiful characters which the highest culture has traced and wrought. ”

“ John Hancock's mother wanted him to be a preacher, but Uncle Thomas would not listen to it—the youth must be taught to be a merchant, so he could be the ready helper and then the successor of his foster-father. ”

“ HANCOCK, ALBANY (1806–1873) , zoologist, was second son and third child of John Hancock, a saddler and ironmonger of Newcastle-on-Tyne, a man of exceptional cultivation, possessing a microscope and a small library containing works of Pliny, Linnæus, Lister, Donovan, and Bewick, and the 'Philosophical Transactions.' John Hancock had also made collections of plants, insects, and especially of shells, and though he died when Albany was six years old, so thoroughly did his widow carry on his teaching that, of their six children, four devoted themselves to the study of natural history. ”

“ The rebel party resolved to give a ball in her honor at New Tavern. Mrs. Hancock was also in the city, and some fine preparations were made. There was a heated discussion. Some of the more sedate people, who never took part in gayeties, represented that this would be a most inopportune time for such a revel [Pg 135] when the country was in the throes of a mighty struggle.
Christopher Marshall, who was a Quaker by birth, but had espoused the side of the colonies warmly, went to John Hancock, who was then President of the Congress, and requested him to lay the matter seriously before Mrs. ”

“ Eben Pike was called up, and the boy bashfully wriggled—no one could call it walking—up to John Hancock's desk.
When Allen told of the bravery of the young scout and of the way in which he had so recently saved his friends from falling into the hands of the English, Hancock rose from his seat and called for three hearty cheers for the young hero.
Then the Congress settled down to work and appointed officers to assist Washington.
What a brave lot of men! Their names cannot be too often repeated. ”

“ I met him often in the Revolution. He was captain of the Lexington company. Poor fellow, he was killed by a cannon ball at Monmouth, at the head of his company. He died poor, and his widow had a hard time till the little ones grew up.
Of our old playmate, John Hancock, you have all heard, how he inherited the wealth of his Uncle Thomas, and in his turn was the richest man in Boston, and lived in the stone house on Beacon Hill. ”

“ His uncle was indeed such a strong Conservative that he was unwilling to have his adopted son show any leaning to the radical party. But when on the first of August, 1764, Thomas Hancock died of apoplexy, leaving his Beacon Hill mansion and fifty thousand dollars to his widow, Lydia Hancock, and to John his warehouses, ships, and the residue of his estate, in the twinkling of an eye the young man became a prominent factor in the business world of the day, as the sole owner of an extensive export and import trade. ”

“ Both before and after the society was founded, much business was carried on in violation of the law: newspapers and pamphlets continued to flourish in the land; the inferior courts at least were sooner or later opened in nearly every colony; and not infrequently unstamped clearance papers were issued to shipmasters willing to take the risk of seizure in London or elsewhere. Mr. John Hancock, easily persuading himself that there should be no risk, shipped a cargo of oil with the Boston packet in December. “I am under no apprehensions,” he wrote his London agent. ”

“ Doubtless his company was stimulating to the bright little girl; perhaps he took her with him now and then on his trips to Boston or Hingham, when he went to preach or to buy "Flower"; and ministers and other godly folk often came to the parsonage. But probably at her grandparents' home she saw even more people of learning and political sagacity. The Quincy clan itself made a goodly fellowship of cultivated men and women. The Hancocks lived near by. John Hancock was a boy of seven when Abigail was born. ”

“ Captain Hancock sent me one schuyt that had hauled out of the line and surrendered. She had a Lieutenant and 23 soldiers of the 48th regiment, with 5 Dutch seamen on board. She is so useful here I cannot part with her yet. Enclosed is a list of our loss, which, though great, is less than might have been expected, owing to the enemy directing their fire at our masts. The Rattler and the Cruiser have of course suffered most in the latter respect, but are nearly ready for service again. The smoke would not allow us to see the effect of our shot on the enemy ”

“ Had the Revolution failed, the disgrace of the men who threw the tea overboard would never have been removed, and the best that history could say of them would be that, like the Attucks mob, they were enthusiasts without reason.
John Hancock, one of the principal leaders of the Tea Party Mob, and the owner of the sloop "Liberty," which was seized for smuggling, and later the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, inherited £70,000 from his uncle, who had made a large part of it by importing from the Dutch island of St. ”

“ Adams was anxious to secure Hancock for the revolutionary cause, and soon had him so hopelessly entangled that there was no escape for him. On the anniversary of the Boston massacre, he persuaded Hancock to deliver a revolutionary speech, which he had himself prepared, and after that there was a British order out for Hancock's arrest; Adams contrived that Hancock should be one of the three delegates from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress—John and Samuel Adams were the other two—and Hancock was deeply impressed by the honor ”

“ So swift was the blow, so surprising, so overwhelming in numbers, the angle was captured practically without a struggle and the three thousand men within it were forced to surrender with every cannon, their muskets, colors and two Generals. It was the most brilliant single achievement of "Hancock the Superb."
Pressing on, Hancock's men advanced against the second series of trenches a half mile beyond. Here the fight really began.
Into their faces poured a terrific volley of musketry and General John B. Gordon led his men in a desperate charge to drive the invaders back. ”

“ Westward, two miles from Barnett’s, is the historic town of Hancock, named in honor of the man who wrote his name in letters so large and legible, that they were read all round the world. There was no old wagon stand tavern in Hancock, except for a short time about the year 1838. John Shane established it, but was not successful, and removed to Cumberland, where he set up a confectionery shop. Wagoners preferred country before town taverns, as a rule. Stages stopped and exchanged horses in Hancock. ”

“ Captains Hancock and Mason attacked this formidable line with the greatest gallantry and address, attaching themselves particularly to the two praams, both of them of greater, force than themselves, independent of the cross fire from the schooners and schuyts: I sent the Aimable by signal to support them [15] . The Penelope having an able pilot, on signal being made to engage. Captain Broughton worked up to the centre of the enemy’s line, as near as the shoal water would allow, while the Antelope went round the Stroom sand to cut the van off from Ostend. ”

“ I. p. 640. ↑ This division hauled out on the evening of the 15th, and Captain Hancock immediately made the signal of recall to the squadron of gun brigs, then standing to the westward, under the orders of Lieutenant Patrick Manderston. Having done this, and despatched a cutter with the intelligence to Sir W. Sidney Smith, the Cruiser and Rattler got under weigh at dark, and re-anchored within long range of the batteries at the pierhead, the better to prevent the escape of the vessels which had brought up within the Stroom sand. ”

“ The Admiralty, however, did not think proper to break through a regulation then in force, by which no officer under three years standing was considered eligible to be appointed senior Lieutenant of an 18-pounder frigate, although he was allowed to become first of the Aquilon, two other gentlemen being appointed to her who were both his juniors in rank.
Captain Barlow was succeeded in the command of the Aquilon by Captain W. E. Cracraft, with whom Lieutenant Hancock continued to serve until the summer of 1798, when he exchanged into the Valiant, a third rate, on the Jamaica station. ”

“ On approaching the enemy’s position, a division of boats was placed under the command of Lieutenant Hancock, who received directions to land and attack the batteries on the beach as soon as the troops showed themselves on the eminence near the fort; and so admirably was the whole affair conducted, that the blacks were driven from every post with great slaughter, but not until they had made a most desperate resistance. ”

“ To hold the Southern Colonies and give the cause a show of reason before the world, an aristocrat with something to lose, and without a personal grievance, must be chosen, and the man must be from the South. To get Hancock in a position where his mouth would be stopped, he was placed in the chair. It was a master move.
Colonel George Washington was already a hero; he had fought valiantly for England. His hands were clean; while Hancock was openly called a smuggler. Washington was nominated by John Adams. The motion was seconded by Samuel Adams. Hancock turned first red and then deathly pale. ”