Review: John Hancock

July 7, 2025July 6, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Cover image of "John Hancock" by Willard Sterne Randall

John Hancock, Willard Sterne Randall. Dutton (ISBN: 9780593472149) 2025.

Summary: A biography going beyond the flourishing signature to the critical role Hancock played in the American Revolution.

For many of us, the name John Hancock has become synonymous with a flourishing signature, and little more. Some of us know a bit more, that the context of that signature was the Declaration of Independence. What I discovered in reading this biography was that in the first published versions of the Declaration, his signature is the only one, representing his position as President of the Continental Congress. It made him the special object of British attention as a traitor, leading to flight from his Boston home for a time.

All this underscores historian Willard Sterne Randall’s assessment that Hancock played a critical role in the American Revolution. That assessment represents recent archival research. But it was not always so. In 1930, James Truslow Adams described Hancock as “an empty barrel” whose reputation rested on “his money and his gout, the first always used to gain popularity, and the second to prevent his losing it.” Randall makes a very different case.

He begins with Hancock’s humble beginnings as the seven year old son of a clergyman who died. Hancock was subsequently taken under the wing of his uncle Thomas Hancock, who made his fortune as a merchant and shipbuilder. This afforded him a gentleman’s education, including attendance at a writing school to prepare him for work in his uncle’s mercantile enterprises. He completed his Harvard education in time to assist his uncle in the lucrative trade connected with Britain’s French and Indian War.

It was the aftermath of that war that brought the House of Hancock into conflict with the British over customs duties and the seizure of merchandise on which merchants were judged to be evading customs duties. It was also during this time that Thomas began to hand off the business to his capable nephew, making him partner and heir. Thomas was dying of gout, the condition that would later afflict John. Thomas died in 1764, leaving John one of the wealthiest men in the colonies at age 27.

Almost immediately, he plunged into challenging times as business slumped and Parliament passed the hated Stamp Act.. He joined firebrand Sam Adams in resistance to the Act including a boycott. He also seized the opportunity afforded by the Repeal to refocus his trade, building his fortune. Peace was short-lived as the Townshend Acts led to the imposition of new duties. Hancock personally barred a custom’s commissioner bearing outdated orders, precipitating a trial.

The resistance led to British troops in Boston, Hancock’s leadership of the Boston Town Meeting, and his efforts to support armed resistance. Randall’s account traces the subsequent unfolding of events including Hancock;s leadership in Massachusetts and then as President of the Continental Congress. He traces Hancock’s partnership with Washington to provide him the means to fight the British. Hancock spent roughly half of his own wealth in this effort. He also spent his own health, as he increasingly suffered gout attacks.

Randall also describes Hancock’s falling out with Sam Adams as they became political rivals in Massachusetts state government. One of his acts as governor was to advocate ratification of the new Constitution. One of the saddest passages in the book is his meeting with Washington in late 1789. Each witnessed the ravages of the years on the other. Washington wept at how enfeebled Hancock had become.

In conclusion, Randall makes a case for the pivotal contribution Hancock made to American beginnings. First, he was in the forefront of resistance to British policies. He had the foresight to prepare for armed resistance. In addition, he used all his experience with the French and Indian War to provision the troops. He gave political leadership both in Boston and the Continental Congress. Then, he invested a substantial part of his own fortune in the effort. Finally, he gave leadership that helped put his state and the fledgling country on a firm footing. Thus, we learn that this oft-neglected Founder contributed far more than his flourishing signature.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

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Review: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

June 30, 2022June 29, 2022 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967 (publisher’s link is to 2017 Fiftieth Anniversary Edition).

Summary: A study of the ideas conveyed through pamphlets that led to the revolution of the colonies against England.

The original edition of this work, published in 1967, won both Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes for Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn. What Bailyn does is to study the literature that preceded the revolution, much of it in pamphlets ranging from the more religiously based ones of Jonathan Mayhew to the more radical Thomas Paine. He identifies key themes that led to conflict and the Declaration of Independence.

Much of this was rooted in British pamphleteers including John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who protested what they saw as corruption in which royal ministers usurped the power of parliament. It was framed as a conflict of power versus liberty. The colonists began to seem themselves caught up in this conspiracy of power versus liberty, exemplified when the British quartered troops in Boston. Indeed, this conspiracy thinking, mirrored by the British acquired a kind of inevitability that led ineluctably to conflict. In one of his most sobering passages for our present moment, Bailyn writes:

“But the eighteenth century was an age of ideology; the beliefs and fears expressed on one side of the Revolutionary controversy were as sincere as those expressed on the other. The result, anticipated by Burke as early as 1769, was an ‘escalation’ of distrust toward a disastrous deadlock: ‘The Americans,’ Burke said, ‘have made a discovery, or think they have made one, that we mean to oppress them: we have made a discovery, or think we have made one, that they intend to rise in rebellion against us. . . we know not how to advance; they know not how to retreat. . . Some party must give way.’ “

The colonists took this basic opposition of liberty to power and transformed it to fit their context. Their cry of “taxation without representation” was a protest against the purported virtual representation they received in Parliament, in which measures could be decided in which they had no voice. Likewise, they challenged the abstract constitution of sovereign and Parliament, contending for a written constitution that clearly set the boundaries of government. Finally, in a colonial situation far removed from Parliament, they challenged its absolute authority, especially in matters of “internal” versus “external” taxes.

Bailyn then concludes with showing how this “contagion of liberty” spread to concerns about slavery, religious liberty, and the shape of their government, the idea of a democratic republic–one with no sovereign. Bailyn discusses the early deliberations including the fears that democracy could easily degenerate into anarchy, the developments of the ideas of bicameral legislatures, an executive, and of independent courts–designed to protect against both autocrats and anarchy.

Bailyn helps us understand not only the ideas that led to revolution but that led to how we constituted the United States, and the concern to uphold liberty against both absolute power and absolute disorder. It seems to me that what the early thinkers failed to anticipate was the partisan abyss that has developed that exacerbates the inefficiencies of a democratic republic resulting in a descent into disorder matched by the appeal of an authoritarian government that works. Ben Franklin, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention was asked, “What kind of government have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” The question of our day seems to be “will we keep it?” Bailyn’s book can’t answer that for us, but it does trace the ideological heritage that led to the inception of our democratic republic.

Review: God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution

March 17, 2014March 17, 2014 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution by Thomas S. Kidd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If the relationship between religion and our national life in the U.S. were a Facebook status, it would be “it’s complicated”. Truth is, it always has been, according to Thomas S. Kidd.

In this “religious history of the American Revolution” Kidd gives us a highly readable yet nuanced account of our early religious history which avoids either the “Christian America” or “secular state” options. Nothing illustrates this more than the relationship between Baptist evangelist, John Leland and Thomas Jefferson. These were strange bedfellows to be sure and yet both were agreed on one crucial issue, the disestablishment of religion and the promotion of religious liberty for all Americans.

Kidd documents that this passion for liberty, first from the British establishment, and then from any establishment of a particular church was in fact the meeting place between much of the evangelical movement that arose out of the first Great Awakening, and the by and large Unitarian deists and skeptics who were among many of our “Founding Fathers”. Both recognized the vital importance of religion in energizing the rebellion against Great Britain, which accounted for the wide support of military chaplains during the war. Both recognized the importance of religion for the encouragement of sacrifice and public virtue. And both opposed state supported churches that privileged one denomination with tax revenues, and often excluded from public office those unwilling to meet religious tests.

The book also chronicles the fateful concurrence particularly between New England religious leaders and Thomas Jefferson in the statement in our Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable rights”. Intended to assert American equality with the British, it also underscored the deep inconsistency within our country of oppressing Native Americans and enslaving Africans. Kidd explores how this piece of our religious history set up a tension not only between sections of the country but even within the lives of people like Jefferson who both trembled at the consequences of slavery for the country and yet held slaves until he died.

What Kidd argues is that the evidence of these early years presents a picture of public expression of religious faith without state establishment of religious institutions. None envisioned the complete exclusion of matters of faith from public life. In fact, the disestablishment of religion was believed to be a vitalizing factor that even contributed to subsequent religious awakenings and the exceptional vibrancy of religion in American life, a fact noted by de Tocqueville. He sums up the agreement between the evangelicals and the founders as follows, “The founders’ religious agreement was on public values, not private doctrines” (p. 254). He warns against things like divine providentialism supporting every conceivable conflict and the kinds of “Christian America” rhetoric seen in some quarters today. Yet none of this argues against the importance of religion in public life, particularly to advance commonly held values.

The only reservation I have here is that this can sometimes smack of a pragmatism that uses religious faith for political ends. While people of faith should be welcomed in public life and discourse, they also need to be watchful for being used (and duped) for political ends inconsistent with their most deeply held principles.

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