HANCOCK.

In the mouths of the people of New England, and indeed throughout the

United States, the name of John Hancock has become a household word. In

the State of Massachusetts, where he was born, lived, and died, and in

the affairs of which he took, for five-and-twenty years, so very active

and leading a part, he enjoyed a degree and a permanence of popularity

never yet obtained by any other man. And yet we may observe and the same

thing may be noted in other and more recent instances--a remarkable fact

that deserves to be pondered--that his high degree of popularity was not

at all dependent upon any peculiar embodiment or manifestation on his

part of the more prevailing and characteristic traits of the community

about him. Indeed the popular favor which Hancock enjoyed would seem to

have been determined, as the attachment of individuals so often is, and

as has happened also in other notable instances, rather by the

attraction of opposites.

And yet Hancock's line of descent was such as might naturally enough

have inspired the expectation of finding in him a good many more marks

of the old puritan temper and manners than he ever exhibited. From the

days of the first settlement of New England, down to the period of the

Revolution and afterwards, the "ministers" constituted a sort of

clerical nobility, enjoying a very high degree of influence and

consideration; and it is to forefathers of that order, that a large part

of the most distinguished and influential New England families may trace

their origin. The elder sons of these ministers, commonly, and the

younger ones often, were educated to the profession of their fathers,

long regarded in New England as the most certain road to distinction,

whether spiritual or temporal. But as the demand for ministers was

limited, and as their families were generally pretty large, many of

their sons found it necessary to engage in the avocations of civil life,

in which they not uncommonly attained to wealth and high social

positions. Yet, for the most part, however zealous and successful they

might be in the pursuit of temporal objects, they still continued to

exhibit pretty evident marks of their clerical descent and breeding in a

certain stiff, cold, and austere gravity, if not, indeed, in a certain

sanctimonious air even in the very act of concluding the very tightest

and sharpest of bargains;--all the attributes, in fact, comprehensively

and impressively conveyed to an inhabitant of New England by the title

of _Deacon_, which office, as if still clinging to the horns of the

altar, they often filled; thus becoming pillars and supports of that

church of which their fathers had been the candlesticks.

The grandfather of John Hancock, himself called John, was for more than

fifty years, as if by a sort of vaticination of the future, minister of

Lexington, near to Concord; thus associating with that of Hancock

another name, now to all American ears so familiar as the scene of the

first revolutionary bloodshed. We are told by a biographer of this first

John Hancock, that he possessed "a facetious temper," but in the grim

old portrait which still hangs on the walls of his grandson's family

mansion-house, very small traces of facetiousness appear; and so far as

physiognomy goes, we should be rather inclined to look to his

grandmother, to whose accompanying portrait the artist has given a fine

open countenance, with something of a magnificent and voluptuous style

of beauty, for the source of those social qualities and captivating

manners by which their famous grandson was distinguished. The minister

of Lexington had two sons, both also ministers, one of whom became his

father's colleague. The other, the father of our John Hancock, was

settled at Braintree, near Boston, in that part of it which now

constitutes the town of Quincy; and it was here that in the year 1737

our John Hancock was born, only a short distance from the birth-place of

John Adams, who was some two years his senior. The old house in which

the future patriot first saw the light was destroyed by an accidental

fire previous to the Revolution; and the land on which it had stood

coming subsequently into the possession of John Adams, he presented it

to the town of Quincy as a site for a future academy.

At the age of six or seven years, the young John Hancock was left

without a father; but in his uncle, Thomas Hancock, he found a guardian

and protector, who not only loved him, but was able to assist him.

Thomas Hancock early in life had been placed as an apprentice to a

Boston stationer, and had afterwards set up in that line of business for

himself: but subsequently extending the sphere of his operations, he

became one of the most eminent and successful merchants of New England.

As he had no children, he adopted, as his own, his young nephew, whose

affable and joyous temper had not failed to make him dear to his uncle,

as they did to so many others; and having sent him to Harvard College,

where he graduated at the early age of seventeen, he took him afterwards

into his counting-house to be initiated into the mysteries of

merchandise; and in due season admitted him as a partner. It was,

perhaps, as well on business as for pleasure, or general improvement,

that the young Hancock visited England, whither he went in company with

the returning Governor Pownall, whose taste for social enjoyment was

similar to his own, and where he saw the funeral of George II. and the

coronation of George III., little thinking at that moment how active a

part he was himself soon to take in curtailing the limits of the British

monarchy, and in snatching from the young king's crown its brightest

jewel.

Thomas Hancock, the uncle, died in 1764, leaving behind him a fortune

amassed by his judicious and successful mercantile enterprises, of not

less than $350,000, one of the largest ever acquired in Boston, up to

that time, though small in comparison with several of the present day,

when even ten times as much may be produced by combined good fortune,

tact, and perseverance. Thomas Hancock bestowed by his will some

considerable legacies for charitable purposes, among others a thousand

pounds to Harvard College to endow a professorship of oriental

languages, being thus, as the historian of the college assures us, the

first native American to endow a professorship in any literary

institution;--but the great bulk of his fortune he bequeathed to his

favorite nephew, $250,000 at once, and a reversionary interest in

$100,000 more, of which his widow was to enjoy the use during her life.

Thus in 1764, at the early age of twenty-seven, and just upon the eve of

the commencement of the revolutionary disputes with the mother country,

John Hancock came into possession of one of the largest fortunes in the

province.

Yet, though this large estate was an instrument and a stepping-stone,

without the help of which Hancock would never have attained to that

social and political distinction which he coveted and enjoyed so much,

yet without his rare personal gifts and accomplishments it would have

been wholly unavailing to that end; and so far from qualifying him,

would have disqualified him, as it did so many other of the rich men of

that time, for playing the conspicuous part he did in political affairs.

Though for some time after his uncle's death he continued in business as

a merchant, there were others who knew much better than he how to

increase estates, already in the popular estimate--especially

considering the use made of them--quite too large. Indeed, his business

operations do not seem to have had mainly or primarily in view the

making of money; for though he started new enterprises, going largely

into ship-building, it was rather, at least so Hutchinson insinuates, as

a politician than as a capitalist, looking more to the number of people

he employed, and the increase thereby of his influence and popularity,

than to the enlargement of his already plentiful fortune. There were

others also who knew much better than he how to keep what they had, at

least as they thought, men who used no less economy in spending their

money than they or their fathers had done in acquiring it. But although

the rich man who keeps his capital entire, and even increasing, is, in

some sense, certainly a public benefactor, yet the fountain that

overflows, sending forth a copious stream which the thirsty passers-by

are all free to drink from, or at least to look at, is always more

joyfully seen and more pleasingly remembered--even though it does run

the risk of some time running dry--than the deep well, whose water is

hardly visible, and which, though quite inexhaustible, yet for want of

any kind of a bucket that can be made to sink into it, or any rope long

enough to draw such a bucket up, is very little available to the parched

throats of the fainting wayfarers, who, in the spirit and with the

feelings of Tantalus, are thus rather disposed to curse than to bless

it.

To be able to make money is, at least in New England, a very common

accomplishment, to be able to keep it not a rare one; but very few have

understood so well as Hancock did, how to make the most of it in the way

of spending it, obtaining from it, as he did, the double gratification

of satisfying his own private inclinations, at the same time that he

promoted his political views by the hold that he gained on the favor and

good-will of his fellow-citizens.

He possessed, indeed, in a degree, those tastes which wealth is best

able to gratify, and to the gratification of which it is most essential.

In the very face and eyes of the puritanical opinions and the staid and

ultra-sober habits of New England, he delighted in splendid furniture,

fine clothes, showy equipages, rich wines, good dinners, gay company,

cards, dances, music, and all sorts of festivities. Nothing pleased him

so much as to have his house full of guests to share with him in these

enjoyments, and few were better qualified, by winning manners, graceful

and affable address, a ready wit, a full flow of spirits, and a keen

enjoyment of the whole thing, to act the part of master of the feast.

But while thus luxuriously inclined, he had no disposition for gross

debauch: and the presence of ladies at all his entertainments, while it

seemed to give to them a new zest, banished from his house that riotous

dissipation into which mere male gatherings are so certain to sink; and

which in times past, in New England, made the idea of gross dissipation

almost inseparable from that of social enjoyment, nor even yet is the

distinction between them fully apprehended by every body.

Among other property which Hancock had inherited from his uncle, was a

stone mansion-house, still standing, and now in the very centre of the

city of Boston, but which then was looked upon as quite retired and

almost in the country. This house, which was built about the year that

Hancock was born, fronts eastwardly on Boston Common, since so

elaborately improved and converted into so beautiful a park, with its

gravel walks, trees, and smooth-shaven lawns, but which was then a

_common_ in the old English sense of the word, a common pasture for the

cows of the neighbors, and a training field for the militia, with very

few improvements except a single gravel walk and two or three rows of

trees along Tremont-street. This house was situated a little west of the

central and highest summit of that triple hill, which had early acquired

for the peninsula of Boston the name of Trimountain,--since shortened

into Tremont, and preserved in the name of the street above mentioned,

which central summit was, from an early period, known as Beacon Hill, a

name preserved in that of Beacon-street. This name was derived from the

use to which this highest central summit had been put from a very early

period--materials being always kept in readiness upon the top of it for

kindling a bonfire, as a means of alarming the country round in case of

invasion or other danger. After having been a good deal graded down,

this summit is now occupied as a site for the State House, which, with

its conspicuous dome, crowns and overlooks the whole city.

It was in this mansion-house of his uncle's, which seems as if by a sort

of attraction to have drawn the State House to its side, that Hancock

continued to live except when absent at Philadelphia in attendance on

the Continental Congress; and not content with its original dimensions,

to afford more room for his numerous guests, he built at one end of it a

wooden addition, since removed, containing a dining-room, dancing-hall,

and other like conveniences. It was here Hancock, assisted by his

amiable and accomplished wife, who entered into all his tastes and

feelings, and who contributed her full share to give expression and

realization to them, presided over so many social dinner parties and gay

assemblages, dressed out, both host and guests, in that rich costume

which Copley, who was one of Hancock's near neighbors, loved so well to

paint, and of which his pencil has transmitted to us so vivid an idea.

Nor did he show himself abroad with less display than he exhibited at

home, his custom being to ride on public occasions in a splendid

carriage drawn by six beautiful bays, and attended by several servants

in livery.

While the public attention was thus drawn upon him by a display which at

once attracted and gratified the eyes of the multitude, whose envy at

that time there was less fear than now of exciting, and by a generous

and free hospitality, the more captivating for not being either

indigenous or common, the part which Hancock took in the rising disputes

with the mother country converted him into that popular idol, which he

continued to be for the remainder of his life; and which, to one so

greedy as he was of honor and applause, must have been in the highest

degree gratifying. It is indeed not uncommon to depreciate the public

services of such men as Hancock, by ascribing all to vanity and the love

of distinction; as if without the impulse of these motives any great

efforts would be made to serve the public! Worthy indeed of all honor

are those men in whom these impulses take so honorable a direction; and

happy the nation able to purchase such services at so cheap a rate!

In 1766, two years after his uncle's death, Hancock was chosen, along

with James Otis, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Cushing, one of the four

representatives from Boston to the General Court. The seizure, two years

after, of his sloop Liberty, for alleged violations of the revenue laws,

in evading the payment of duties on a cargo of wine imported from

Madeira, closely and personally identified him with the resistance then

making throughout the colonies to the attempt to collect a revenue in

America by parliamentary authority alone. This seizure led to a riot

which figures in all the histories of that period, by which the

commissioners of the customs were driven from the town, and in

consequence of which two or three British regiments were ordered to

Boston--the first step on the part of the mother country towards a

military enforcement of the authority which she claimed. Hancock felt

personally the consequences of this riot, in a number of libels or

criminal informations filed against him in the Court of Admiralty, to

recover penalties to the amount of three or four hundred thousand

dollars, for violations of the revenue laws. "It seemed," writes John

Adams in his Diary, and he had ample opportunity to know, for he was

retained as Hancock's counsel, "as if the officers of the court were

determined to examine the whole town as witnesses." In hopes to fish out

some evidence against him; they interrogated many of his near relations

and most intimate friends. They even threatened to summon his aged and

venerable aunt: nor did those annoyances cease till the battle of

Lexington, the siege of Boston, and the expulsion of the British from

that town shut up the Admiralty Court, and brought the prosecution, and

British authority along with it, to an end.

At the commencement of the disputes with the mother country, the

sentiment against the right of parliament to impose taxes on the

colonies had seemed to be almost unanimous. The only exceptions were a

few persons holding office under the crown. The rich especially, this

being a question that touched the pocket, were very loud in their

protests against any such exercise of parliamentary authority. But as

the dispute grew more warm and violent, threatening to end in civil

commotions, the rich, not doubting that the mother country would triumph

in the end, and fearing the loss of their entire property in the attempt

to save a part of it, began to draw back; thus making much more

conspicuous than ever the position of Hancock as a leader of the popular

party. Indeed there was hardly a wealthy man in Boston, he and Bowdoin

excepted, both of whom had not accumulated but inherited their property,

who did not end with joining the side of the mother country. And the

same thing may be observed of Massachusetts, and indeed of New England

generally. Of all the larger and better-looking mansion-houses, of

eighty years old and upwards, still standing in the vicinity of Boston,

of which the number is considerable, there are very few that did not

originally belong to some old tory who forfeited his property out of his

very anxiety to preserve it. Hancock's acceptance of the command of the

company of cadets or governor's guard, whence the title of colonel by

which for some time he was known; his acting with that company as an

escort, at the funeral of Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, who was very

obnoxious to the patriots; his refusing to go all lengths with Samuel

Adams in the controversy with Hutchinson as to the governor's right to

call the General Court together, elsewhere than in Boston; and the

circumstance that although he had been several times before negatived as

a member of the council, Hutchinson had at length allowed his name on

the list of counsellors proposed by the General Court; these and perhaps

some other circumstances excited indeed some suspicions that Hancock

also was growing lukewarm to the popular cause. But these he took care

to dissipate by declining to sit as counsellor, by acting as orator at

the Anniversary of the Boston Massacre, and by accepting, not long

after, an appointment as one of the delegates to the Continental

Congress. The oration above alluded to, delivered in March, 1774, and

which Hancock's enemies pretended was written for him by Dr. Cooper, was

pronounced by John Adams, who heard it, "an eloquent, pathetic, and

spirited performance."

"The composition," so he wrote in his diary, "the pronunciation, the

action, all exceeded the expectation of every body. [These last were

certainly not Cooper's.] They exceeded even mine, which were very

considerable. Many of the sentiments came with great propriety from him.

His invective, particularly against a preference of riches to virtue,

came from him with a singular dignity and grace." A passage in this

oration, which was afterwards printed, on the subject of standing

armies, gave great offence to the British officers and soldiers by whom

the town continued to be occupied, and not long after Governor Gage

dismissed Hancock from his command of the company of cadets; whereupon

they disbanded themselves, returning the standard which the governor on

his initiation into office had presented to them.

The sensibilities of the British officers and soldiers being again

excited by some parts of an oration delivered the next year by Dr.

Warren, on the same anniversary, a few weeks before the battle of

Lexington, a military mob beset Hancock's house and began to destroy the

fences and waste the grounds. Gage sent a military guard to put a stop

to their outrages.

But it was no longer safe for Hancock to remain in such close contiguity

to the British troops. He was president of the Provincial Congress of

Massachusetts, which, in consequence of the act of parliament to modify

the charter of that province, had lately assumed to themselves the power

of the purse and the sword. He was also president of the provincial

committee of safety, which, under authority of the Provincial Congress,

had begun in good earnest to prepare for taking arms for the vindication

of those rights which the men of Massachusetts claimed under the now

violated and (so far as parliament had the power) abrogated Charter of

the province. Under these circumstances, Hancock abandoned his house,

which was subsequently occupied by Lord Percy as his headquarters; and

at the time of the march of the British troops for Concord, he was

living at Lexington, in company with Samuel Adams. Indeed it was

supposed that one of the objects of this march was to seize the persons

of those two patriots, to whom Gage seemed to point as the authors of

the collision at Lexington by the issue of a proclamation, in which

pardon was offered to all who, giving over their late traitorous

proceedings, would furnish proof of their repentance and of their

renewed allegiance to their king, by submitting to the authority of his

duly appointed governor, and of the late act of parliament: but from

this pardon John Hancock and Samuel Adams were excepted, their offences

being too flagrant to be passed over without condign punishment.

Before the issue of this proclamation, Hancock had already proceeded to

Philadelphia, where the famous Continental Congress of 1775 was already

in session, composed, to a great extent, of the same members with its

predecessor of the year before, but of which he had been chosen a member

in place of Bowdoin. He was a fluent and agreeable speaker, one of those

who, by grace of manner, seem to add a double force and weight to all

which they say; yet in that illustrious assembly there were quite a

number, including John Adams, from his own State, compared with whom he

could hardly have claimed rank as an orator. There were also in that

assembly several able writers; the state papers emanating from whose

pens were compared by Chatham to the ablest productions of the

republican ages of Greece and Rome; but Hancock was not one of those.

There were men of business there who undertook, without shrinking, all

the Herculean labors of organizing the army and navy, the treasury and

the foreign office of the new confederation--but neither in this line

does Hancock appear to have been greatly distinguished. And yet it was

not long before, by his appointment as president of that body, he rose

to a position in Continental affairs, no less conspicuous than that

which we have seen him exercising in those of his own province.

Circumstances led indeed to this situation, quite apart from Hancock's

personal qualifications, and yet had he not possessed those

qualifications in a high degree, he would never have had the opportunity

of immortalizing himself as he has done by his famous signature at the

head of the Declaration of Independence,--a signature well calculated to

give a strong impression with those who judge of personal character by

handwriting, of the decided temper and whole-hearted energy of the man.

Virginia, as the most populous and wealthy of the colonies, had received

the compliment of furnishing the President of the Congress of 1774; and

Peyton Randolph--a planter and lawyer, an elderly gentleman of the old

school, formerly attorney general of that province, and in Governor

Dinwiddie's time, sent by the Assembly on a special message to England,

to complain of the governor for the fees he exacted on patents of

land--had been first selected for that distinguished station. He had

again been chosen as President of the new Congress; but being also

speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and that body having been

called together by Lord Dunmore, in what proved to be its last meeting,

to consider Lord North's conciliatory propositions, it became necessary

for Randolph to return home. His place in Congress was filled, in

compliance with an arrangement previously made by the House of

Burgesses, by no less distinguished a successor than Thomas Jefferson;

but in filling up the vacant seat of President of Congress, during what

was then regarded as but the temporary absence of Randolph, it was

natural enough to look to Massachusetts, the next province to Virginia

in population and wealth, no ways behind her in zeal for the cause, and,

as the result proved, far her superior in military capabilities. Nor

among the delegates present from Massachusetts, was there any one who

seemed, on the whole, so well fitted for the station, or likely to be at

all so satisfactory to the delegates from the other States, as John

Hancock. Had James Bowdoin been present, he would perhaps have been more

acceptable to the great body of the members than Hancock, as being less

identified than he was with violent measures. But though chosen a

delegate to the first Congress, the sickness of Bowdoin's wife had

prevented his attendance; and the same cause still operating to keep him

at home, John Hancock had been appointed, as we have mentioned, in his

place. Of Hancock's four colleagues, all of whom were older men than

himself, Samuel Adams certainly, if not John Adams also, might have

disputed with him the palm of zeal and activity in the revolutionary

cause; but not one of them risked so much as he did, at least in the

judgment of his fellow-members from the middle and southern provinces,

who were generally men of property. He alone, of all the New England

delegates, had a fortune to lose; and while his wealthy southern

colleagues looked with some distrust upon the Adamses, regarding them

perhaps a little in the light, if we may be pardoned so coarse an

illustration, of the monkey in the fable, who wished to rake his

chestnuts out of the fire at the risk and expense of other people's

fingers, no such idea could attach to Hancock, who, in point of fortune,

had probably as much to lose as any other member, except perhaps John

Dickinson--for the wealthy Charles Carrol, of Maryland, had not a seat

in the Congress. At the same time Hancock's genial manners and social

spirit, seemed to the members from the southern and middle provinces to

make him quite one of themselves, an associate in pleasure and social

intercourse, as well as in business; while the austere spirit and

laborious industry of the Adamses threatened to inflict upon them the

double hardship of all work and no play. But while the moderate members

found, as they supposed, in the fortune which Hancock had at stake a

pledge that he would not hurry matters to any violent extremes; the few

also most disposed to press matters to a final breach, were well

satisfied to have as president, one who had shown himself in his own

province so energetic, prompt, decisive, and thorough.

Yet Hancock's colleagues, and the members generally from New England,

never entirely forgave the preference which had been thus early shown to

him; and upon many of the sectional questions and interests which soon

sprung up, and by which the Continental Congress was at times so

seriously belittled and so greatly distracted, Hancock was often accused

of deserting the interests of New England, and of going with the

southern party. The internal and secret history of the Continental

Congress or rather of the temporary and personal motives by which the

conduct of its members, as to a variety of details, was influenced,

remains so much in obscurity that it is not easy to ascertain the

precise foundation of those charges, reiterated as they are in letters

and other memoirs of those times; but on the whole, no reason appears to

regard them otherwise than as the natural ebullition of disappointed

partisanship against a man, who, in the struggle of contending factions

and local interests, strove to hold the balance even, and who did not

believe, with Samuel Adams and some others, that political wisdom was

limited to New England alone.

The President of Congress, in those times, was regarded as the personal

representative of that body and of the sovereignty of the Union; and in

that respect filled, to a certain degree, in the eye of the nation and

of the world, the place now occupied by the President of the United

States, though sharing, in no degree, the vast patronage and substantial

power attached to the latter office. In his capacity of personal

representative of the nation the President of Congress kept open house

and a well-spread table, to which members of Congress, officers of the

army, attaches of the diplomatic corps foreign and domestic,

distinguished strangers, every body in fact who thought themselves to be

any body--a pretty large class, at least in America--expected

invitations; whereby was imposed upon that officer pretty laborious

social duties, in addition to his public and political ones, which were

by no means trifling. All these duties of both classes, Hancock

continued to discharge with great assiduity and to general satisfaction,

for upwards of two years and a half, through a period at which the power

and respectability of the Continental Congress was at its greatest

height, before the downfall of the paper money and the total exhaustion

of the credit of the nation at home and abroad had reduced the

representative of the sovereignty of the nation to a pitiful dependence

on the bounty of France, and upon requisitions on the States, to which

very little attention was paid. Feeling all the dignity of his position,

Hancock took one of the largest houses in Philadelphia, where he lived

in profuse hospitality, and all upon advances made out of his own

pocket. After his day, it became necessary for Congress to allow their

president a certain annual stipend out of the public treasury to support

the expenses of his household. In Hancock's time, this was not thought

of; and it was not till near the close of the war, after the precedent

had been established in the case of his successors, that he put in any

claim for the reimbursement of his expenses.

There is a story, that Hancock, when chosen President of Congress,

blushed and modestly hung back, and was drawn into the chair only by the

exertion of some gentle force on the part of the brawny Harrison, a

member from Virginia, and afterwards governor of that State. And yet,

according to John Adams, Hancock was hardly warm in his seat when he

aspired to a much more distinguished position. He expected to have been

appointed Commander-in-Chief of the American armies, and displayed in

his countenance, so Adams says in his Diary, the greatest vexation and

disappointment when Washington was named for that station. It is certain

that he had some military aspirations, for he wrote to Washington

shortly after his assumption of command, requesting that some place in

the army might be kept for him, to which Washington replied with

compliments at his zeal, but with apprehension that he had no place at

his disposal worthy of Colonel Hancock's acceptance. Not long after his

return to Boston, his military ardor revived. He procured himself to be

chosen a major-general of the Massachusetts militia, and he marched the

next summer (1778) at the head of his division to join the expedition

against Newport, in which the French fleet and troops just arrived under

D'Estaing, a detachment from Washington's army under Sullivan, Greene,

and La Fayette, and the militia from the neighboring States were to

co-operate. But D'Estaing suffered himself to be drawn out to sea by the

English fleet, which had appeared off Newport for that express purpose,

and after a slight running engagement, the fleet, while struggling for

the weather gauge, were separated by a violent storm, in which some of

D'Estaing's ships were dismasted and others greatly damaged, so that he

judged it necessary to put into Boston to refit. The American army

meanwhile had crossed to Rhode Island, and established itself before

Newport, but as Count D'Estaing could not be persuaded to return, it

became necessary to abandon the island, not without a battle to cover

the retreat. With this expedition, Hancock's military career seems to

have terminated; but on arriving at Boston, he found ample work on hand

better adapted perhaps to his talents than the business of active

warfare. Sullivan, of a hot and impetuous temper, and excessively vexed

at D'Estaing's conduct, was even imprudent enough to give expression to

his feelings in general orders. It was like touching a spark to tinder,

and the American army before New-York, which shared the general's

feelings, encouraged by his example, "broke out," so Greene wrote to

Washington, "in clamorous strains." The same disappointment was bitterly

felt also at Boston; for the British occupation of Newport had long been

an eyesore to New England, occasioning great expense in keeping up

militia to watch the enemy there, and in projects for their expulsion;

and the prevailing dissatisfaction at the conduct of the French admiral

soon found expression in a serious riot between the populace of the town

and the sailors of the French fleet, threatening to revive all those

violent prejudices against the French, fostered in the colonies for near

a hundred years, and which the recent alliance with France had glossed

over indeed, but had not wholly subdued. Upon this occasion, Hancock

exerted himself with zeal and success to prevent this ill-temper, which

had broken out between the classes least accustomed to restrain their

feelings or the expression of them, from spreading any higher. He opened

his house to the French officers, who, delighted at the opportunity of

social enjoyment and female society, kept it full from morning till

night, and by his "unwearied pains," so La Fayette wrote to Washington,

did much to heal the breach which Sullivan's imprudence had so

dangerously aggravated. On this occasion, at least, if on no other,

Hancock's love of gayety, and of social pleasures, proved very

serviceable to his country.

During his absence at Philadelphia, his popularity at home had undergone

no diminution, and he soon resumed, as a member of the council, on which

since the breach with Gage the executive administration had devolved, a

leading influence in the State administration; and when at last, after

two trials, a constitution was sanctioned by the people, he was chosen

by general consent the first governor under it. This was a station of

vastly more consideration then than now. Under the old confederation, at

least after the Continental Congress, by the exhaustion of its credit

and the repudiation of its bills, had no longer money at command, the

States were sovereign in fact as well as in words; while all that

reverence which under the old system had attached to the royal

governors, had been transferred to their first republican successors.

Since that period the State governments have sunk into mere

municipalities for the administration of local affairs, and all eyes

being constantly turned towards Washington, the executive offices of the

States, even the station of governor, are no longer regarded except as

stepping-stones to something higher.

Hancock discharged his office as governor to good acceptance for five

years, when he voluntarily retired, making way for James Bowdoin, who

might be regarded in some respects as his rival, the head of a party,

perhaps more intelligent, and certainly far more select, than that great

body of the population by whom Hancock was supported; but whom, so at

least his opponents said, he rather studied to follow than aspired to

lead. During Bowdoin's administration, occurred Shays' insurrection, one

of the most interesting and instructive incidents in the history of

Massachusetts, but into the particulars of which we have not space here

to enter. This insurrection, of which the great object was the

cancelling of debts, an object which the States now practically

accomplish by means of insolvent laws, was thought to involve, either as

participators more or less active, or at least as favorers and

sympathizers, not less than a third part of the population of the State.

The active measures taken at Bowdoin's suggestion for putting down the

insurgents by an armed force, and the political disabilities and other

punishments inflicted upon them after their defeat, did not at all tend

to increase Bowdoin's popularity with this large portion of the people.

Though Hancock's health had not allowed him to take his seat in the

Continental Congress, to which he had again been chosen a delegate, and

by which he had, in his absence, been again selected as their

president--yet, weary of retirement, he suffered himself to be brought

forward as a candidate, and to be elected as governor over Bowdoin's

head--a procedure never forgiven by what may be called the party of

property, against which the insurrection of Shays had been aimed, whose

members thenceforth did not cease, in private at least, to stigmatize

Hancock as a mere demagogue, if not indeed almost a Shaysite himself.

Nor indeed is it impossible, that the governor, with all his property,

had some personal sympathies with that party. He, like them, was

harassed with debts, which, as we have seen in the case of the college,

he was not much inclined, and probably not very able, to bring to a

settlement. He still had large possessions in lands and houses in

Boston, but at this moment his property was unsalable, and to a

considerable extent unproductive; and a stop law might have suited his

convenience not less than that of the embarrassed farmers in the

interior, who had assembled under the leadership of Shays to shut up the

courts and put a stop to suits. This scheme, however, had been

effectually put down prior to Hancock's accession to office, and it only

remained for him to moderate, by executive clemency, the penalties

inflicted on the suppressed insurgents--a policy which the state of the

times and the circumstances of the case very loudly demanded, however

little it might be to the taste of the more imperious leaders of the

party by which those penalties had been inflicted. But even this same

party might acknowledge a great obligation to Hancock for the assistance

which they soon after obtained from him in securing the ratification by

Massachusetts of that federal constitution under which we now so happily

live. Still governor of the State, he was chosen a delegate from Boston

to the State convention, called to consider the proposed constitution:

and though incapacitated by sickness from taking his seat till near the

close of the session, he was named its president. The federal

constitution had been already ratified by five States, Delaware,

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut. But Virginia, New

York, and North Carolina, were known to be strongly against it, and its

rejection by Massachusetts would, in all probability, prevent its

acceptance by the number of States required to give it effect. The

convention was very equally divided, and the result hung long in doubt.

At last Hancock came upon the floor and proposed some amendments,

principally in the nature of a bill of rights, agreed to probably by

concert out of doors, to be suggested for the approval of Congress and

adoption by the States under the provision for amendments contained in

the constitution, and most of which were afterwards adopted. Thus

sweetened, the constitution was fairly forced down the reluctant throat

of the convention; and unlike the typical book of St. John, though so

bitter in the mouth, it has fortunately proved sweet enough and very

nourishing in the digestion.

On the occasion of Washington's visit to Boston, subsequently to his

inauguration as President, a curious struggle took place between him and

Hancock, or perhaps we ought rather to say, between the Governor of

Massachusetts and the President of the United States, on a question of

etiquette. Hancock, as Governor of Massachusetts, insisted upon the

first call, a precedence which Washington, as President of the United

States, refused to yield. Finding himself obliged to succumb, Hancock's

gout and other complicated diseases served him for once in good stead;

for in the note which he finally sent, announcing his intention to wait

upon Washington, they answered as a convenient excuse for not having

fulfilled that duty before.

Some two or three years after, we find Governor Hancock, out of

deference to the puritanical opinions and laws of the State, involved in

another noticeable controversy, but one into which he could not have

entered with any great heart. Shortly after the adoption of the federal

constitution, a company of stage-players had made their appearance in

Boston, and though the laws still prohibited theatrical exhibitions,

encouraged by the countenance of the gayer part of the population, they

commenced the performance of plays, which they advertised in the

newspapers as "Moral Lectures." Some of their friends among the

townsfolks had even built a temporary theatre for their accommodation, a

trampling under foot of the laws, which seemed the more reprehensible as

the legislature, though applied to for that purpose, had twice refused

to repeal that prohibitory statute. "To the legislature which met

shortly after," we quote from the fourth volume of Hildreth's History of

the United States, "Governor Hancock gave information that 'a number of

aliens and foreigners had entered the State, and in the metropolis of

the government, under advertisements insulting to the habits and

education of the citizens, had been pleased to invite them to, and to

exhibit before such as attended, stage-plays, interludes, and theatrical

entertainments, under the style and appellation of Moral Lectures.' All

which, as he complained, had been suffered to go on without any steps

taken to punish a most open breach of the laws, and a most contemptuous

insult to the powers of government. Shortly after this denunciation by

the governor, suddenly one night, in the midst of the performance of

'The School for Scandal,' the sheriff of the county appeared on the

stage, arrested the actors, and broke up the performances. When the

examination came on, having procured able counsel (one of whom, if we

mistake not, was the then young Harrison Gray Otis), the actors were

discharged on the ground that the arrest was illegal, the warrant not

having been sworn to. This error was soon corrected, and a second arrest

brought the performances to a close. But the legislature, finding that

the sentiment of the town of Boston was strong against the law, and that

a new and permanent theatre was in the course of erection, repealed the

prohibitory act a few months after."

This temporary triumph over the poor players was one of the last of

Hancock's long series of successes; unless indeed we ought to assign

that station to the agency which he had in procuring the erasure from

the federal constitution of a very equitable and necessary provision,

authorizing suits in the federal courts against the States by

individuals having claims upon them. At such a suit, brought against the

State of Massachusetts, Hancock exhibited a vast deal of indignation,

calling the legislature together at a very inconvenient season of the

year, and refusing to pay the least attention to the process served upon

him. Yet the Supreme Court of the United States, not long after, decided

that such suits would lie, as indeed was sufficiently plain from the

letter of the constitution. But the sovereign States, with all the

insolence customary to sovereigns, whether one-headed or many-headed,

scorned to be compelled to do justice; and the general clamor raised

against this reasonable and even necessary provision, caused it to be

ultimately struck from the constitution.

Before this was accomplished, Hancock's career of life was over. Worn

down by the gout and other aristocratic diseases, which the progress of

democracy seems, since his time, to have almost banished from America,

he expired at the early age of fifty-six, in the same house in which he

had presided over so many social and political festivities, lamented by

almost the entire population of the State in whose service he had spent

the best part of his life, and whose faithful attachment to him, spite

of some obvious weaknesses on his part, had yet never flagged.

Had we space and inclination, many lessons might be drawn from the

history of his life. We shall confine ourselves to this one, which every

body's daily experience may confirm: that success in active life,

whether political or private, even the attainment of the very highest

positions, depends far less on any extraordinary endowments, either of

nature or fortune, than upon an active, vigorous, and indefatigable

putting to use of such gifts as a man happens to have. What a

difference, so far as name and fame are concerned, and we may add, too,

enjoyment and a good conscience, between the man who puts his talent to

use and him who hoards it up, so that even its very existence remains

unknown to every body but himself and his intimate friends.

=John Adams.=

[Illustration: John Adams fac-simile of letter]

[Illustration: Residence of the Adams Family, Quincy, Mass.]