More than his name on the line: by the time John Hancock had signed the Declaration of Independence, he had already put his life and fortune on the line.

The Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. But John Hancock, who signed the document first and with the largest signature of all, already had his life on the line. Hancock signed the Declaration with much bravado, in his well-known style, reputedly claiming that King George could read his signature without spectacles. But his bravado was anticlimactic compared to historical reality.

The real story of Hancock's patriotism is told in the events leading up to that day, and in the events that followed. He and his friend and fellow signer Samuel Adams had already lived with a price on their heads for more than a year before July 1776. Massachusetts military Governor Thomas Gage formally called for their arrest on treason charges on June 12, 1775, branding the two as rebels against the British crown. And Hancock had already placed a good portion of his considerable fortune at the disposal of the cause of liberty. He even gave George Washington permission to cannonade the Town of Boston to remove British troops from the town. Though the British eventually left Boston without a fight, a battle in Boston would likely have ruined Hancock's vast mansion and shipyard. Nevertheless, Hancock would use up much of his fortune in the cause of American independence.

Orphan Turns Heir

Like John Adams, John Hancock was born in the Massachusetts town of Braintree in the section abutting Boston (later called Quincy). Hancock's father and grandfather were both highly regarded Congregationalist ministers, but John was orphaned as a boy and adopted by his wealthy uncle Thomas Hancock.

John was sent to Harvard, graduating at age 17 in 1754, and then apprenticed in his uncle's Boston counting house. Thomas Hancock was initially a bookseller, but by the 1750s he had amassed a fortune by importing low cost tea from St. Eustatia and goods from England. In 1760, John sailed to England to handle his uncle's accounts and acquaint himself with the company's British customers. He returned to America in 1764 just before his uncle's death, and when Thomas Hancock died John was awarded most of his uncle's massive fortune, about 50,000 [pounds sterling] in cash plus the shipping business. (He collected his uncle's entire estate after Thomas Hancock's widow died several years later.) Though only 27 years old, Hancock managed his inheritance, the largest estate in New England, masterfully. Even Tory rival Thomas Hutchinson conceded that Hancock managed his inheritance well.

When Hancock returned from England, he found America in an atmosphere of political dynamite. The British Parliament had just passed the Sugar Act, followed by the Stamp Act in 1765. American colonists were enraged that the British government would impose taxes on a whole host o items, from newspapers to legal and commercial documents, without their consent.

Parliament had actually levied taxes on molasses and wine long before these acts, but these earlier taxes were routinely circumvented by widespread, almost open, smuggling. The Sugar Act actually reduced the levy on molasses in the hope that traders would be less inclined to engage in smuggling. Because the Sugar and Stamp Acts were the first acts designed solely to generate revenue for the British government, they drew the ire of the colonists.

Hancock met Samuel Adams soon after returning to Boston, and the two patriots enjoyed a stormy but lifelong friendship and political partnership. Adams had long used his pen to criticize government excesses from the margins of political society, but his alliances with the wealthy Hancock and prominent legislator James Otis, combined with public resentment to the Stamp Act, multiplied Adams' influence. Hancock also helped Adams get out of personal financial predicaments with several loans and gifts: Adams barely averted bankruptcy for most of the latter part of his life.

Hancock used his wealth to create jobs and win political popularity. But Tory Governor Thomas Hutchinson and other rivals charged that Hancock was obsessed with public popularity. According to Hutchinson: "He changed the course of his uncle's business, and built, and employed in trade, a great number of ships; and in this way, and by building at the same time several houses, he found work for a great number of tradesmen, made himself popular, was chosen select man, representative, moderator of town meetings, and etc." At one point, Hancock employed more than 10,000 people, most of them in Boston. Hancock was soon elected selectman of the town of Boston, and swept into the General Court (the state's lower legislative branch) in 1766 as part of the great electoral swing toward the Whig (patriotic) faction in state politics.

Hancock's name was affixed to virtually all patriot resolutions protesting the Stamp Act, as well as the 1767 Townshend Act. The Townshend Act taxed paper, lead, tea, and paint, and was condemned by a series of legislative resolutions written by Samuel Adams. The British Parliament demanded the Massachusetts legislature repeal their resolutions against the Townshend Act or risk being disbanded, but Adams engineered a vote with the support of Hancock and Otis reaffirming Massachusetts" position--by a five-to-one vote ratio!

The Liberty Incident

One of John Hancock's sloops, the Liberty, weighed anchor in Boston harbor on May 9, 1768. The sloop was laden with wine intended for the tables of some of Boston's wealthiest citizens. When the customs commissioner refused to allow the cargo to be unloaded until the tax was paid, the sailors tied up the official in the hold of the ship and unloaded the cargo at night. The customs officer reported the events to British authorities, who seized the ship, took it farther out in Boston Harbor and placed it under the watchful guns of the British man-of-war Romney. The Sons of Liberty descended upon the harbor after hearing news of the seizure, beat up two customs commissioners, dragged the customs barge onto land and then to Boston Common, and then set the barge ablaze.

The following month, the town of Boston officially condemned the taking of the Liberty in separate resolutions sent to the governor and the four representatives at General Court whose districts were within town limits. Boston termed the British actions an "illegal seizure of a vessel lying at a wharf," and protested "cutting off her masts, and removing her with an armed force in a hostile manner, under the protection of the king's ships." Hancock could have recovered the Liberty by paying the small tax on the wine; instead he refused to pay the tax and forfeited his ship. It was the first time, but not the last, that Hancock put his fortune on the line in the patriotic cause.

Hancock not only lost his ship in the Liberty incident, but was threatened with an astronomical fine of 100,000 [pounds sterling] for violating British tax laws. Tories conspired to pursue the case in court, but were continuously thwarted by the efforts of patriots to tie up the courts. Finally, in 1769, Attorney General Sewall surrendered to the futility of pursuing Hancock legally, stating, "Our Sovereign Lord the King will prosecute no further hereon."

For several years after the 1770 Boston Massacre, Hancock took a less active role in patriot politics while he tended his neglected business, and his relationship with Samuel Adams seemed to cool for awhile. Governor Hutchinson, who had concluded that Hancock's "ruling passion was a fondness for popular applause," began to woo him in the hopes he would swing over to the Tory camp. Hancock had much to risk by sticking with the patriots. He lived in a regal style; his Back Bay mansion was unequaled in Boston, and he constantly paraded himself around town in the finest gold-embroidered clothing. But Hutchinson would be disappointed to find he had underestimated Hancock's character. Hancock may have had "a fondness for popular applause," and he may even have enjoyed pomp and circumstance, but not at the expense of his principles. Once his business was back on course, Hancock plunged back into patriotic politics with full force. In fact, not only did Hutchinson utterly fail to woo Hancock, but the Tory general strategy to win over the wealthy in Boston society gave up the general populace to Samuel Adams and his street organizers.

Hancock took an active role in the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, and popular lore casts him as the lead "Indian" throwing the tea into the harbor. Hancock also made the annual speech in 1774 commemorating the Boston Massacre four years earlier, thereby dispelling any doubt about whose camp he was in. Hancock called the British troops just about every name in the book, from "villainous" to "murderers," in that dramatic oration: "The Town of Boston, ever faithful to the British Crown, has been invested by a British fleet, the troops of George the third have crossed the Atlantic, not to engage an enemy, but to assist a band of traitors in trampling on the rights and liberties of his most loyal subjects."

In early 1774, the British government reacted to the Tea Party by closing Boston Harbor and through other punitive measures, precipitating armed revolt. In the meantime, Hancock had been elected to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in 1773 and the first Continental Congress in 1774.

By early 1775, London had issued arrest warrants for Hancock and Samuel Adams. The British army column's advance to Lexington on the morning of April 19, 1775 was widely believed to be designed for the dual purpose of capturing Hancock and Adams, who were in Lexington, and seizing the colonial gunpowder stores at Concord.

When Paul Revere alerted Hancock and Adams of the British advance, the militia assembled on Lexington Green, and Hancock resolved to stay and fight with the 200 or so militia. Finally dissuaded by his fiancee (Hancock didn't marry until 1776, when he was 39 years old) and Samuel Adams, Hancock agreed to flee to Woburn before the British arrived. The clashes at Lexington and Concord began the war for American independence, even though a formal declaration would not be made for more than a year. And the closest Hancock would ever get to combat would be as a Massachusetts militia general in a 1778 assault on British-held Newport, Rhode Island.

Commander-in-Chief Controversy

After Lexington and Concord, Hancock left for Philadelphia, where he became president of the Continental Congress in May 1775. He immediately became involved in the congressional decision to appoint a commander-in-chief to protect the colonies from the British. The decision caused a rift in Hancock's personal relationship with both John Adams and his longtime ally Samuel Adams.

John Adams wrote in his diary that "Mr. Hancock himself had an ambition to be appointed commander-in-chief. Whether he thought an election a compliment due to him, and intended to have the honor of declining it, or whether he would have accepted it, I know not. To the compliment he had some pretensions; for, at that time, his exertions, sacrifices, and general merits in the cause of his country had been incomparably greater than those of Colonel Washington. But the delicacy of his health, and his entire want of experience in actual service, though an excellent militia officer, were decisive objections to him in my mind." The fact that Hancock hailed from Massachusetts, the leading state in the armed revolt, didn't work in Hancock's favor either. After all, if the commander-in-chief came from Massachusetts, the British propagandists would be well positioned to split American unity by casting the war as a revolt by Massachusetts alone.

Hancock was in fact shocked that he had not been offered the post. John Adams recalled in his diary how he, with both Hancock and Washington present, rose to nominate a commander-in-chief: "I had no hesitation to declare, that I had but one gentleman in my mind for that important command ... who was among us and very well known to all of us; a gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent universal character would command the approbation of all America, and unite the cordial exertion of all the colonies better than any other person in the Union." But unbeknownst to Hancock, Adams was not referring to him but to the more modest Washington. "Mr. Washington, who happened to sit near the door, as soon as he heard me allude to him, from his usual modesty, darted into the library-room," Adams wrote. On the other hand, "Mr. Hancock, who was our president, which gave me an opportunity to observe his countenance, while I was speaking on the state of the colonies, the army at Cambridge and the enemy, heard me with visible pleasure; but when I came to describe Washington for the commander, I never remarked a more sudden and striking change of countenance. Mortification and resentment were expressed as forcibly as his face could exhibit them."

The turn of events shook Hancock's relationship with Samuel Adams as well as with John Adams, since Hancock correctly concluded that Samuel Adams had worked behind the scenes with John Adams to prevent Hancock's nomination. Samuel Adams' political clout in Massachusetts ebbed for years due to the rift, though the two paired again in a political alliance in 1787 when Adams served as Hancock's lieutenant governor.

The fact that Hancock had not been offered the commander-in-chief post did not impact his public duties in any way, however. He continued to serve as president of the Continental Congress for the next two years in an admirable manner, returning to Massachusetts in 1777 suffering heavily from gout.

First Signer

Hancock, acting as president of Congress, was the only member to sign the Declaration of Independence on July 3, 1776. Most of the other delegates signed the document in an August 2nd ceremony.

But as already indicated, Hancock wasn't taking any new risks. His name had long been among a handful of patriots who would receive no pardon if the colonies concluded a peace within the British empire. The Boston merchant continued to put his fortune at stake throughout the war, expending more money than any other Declaration signer toward the war effort. In 1778, Hancock helped to prop up the faltering Massachusetts fiat (unbacked) currency by ordering his debtors to pay his personal accounts in fiat bills. Fiat currency was worth only one-fourth of the same payment in gold at the time; Hancock basically cut a large part of his estate by three-fourths to help the state's war effort.

Hancock's chief service to his country after his service in the Continental Congress (with the exception of six months as president under the Articles of Confederation in 1785-86) was to his native state. He served as president of the Massachusetts constitutional convention that drew up the state's 1780 Constitution, and became the first elected governor of the state. Hancock remained popular throughout his life, and had the Massachusetts governorship whenever he sought election to it.

Except for two years when his health failed him (1785-87), Hancock served as governor of Massachusetts from 1780 through his death in 1793. Hancock's health recovered in time for him to push the 1787 federal Constitution in a 1788 Massachusetts ratifying convention, his support based on the understanding that a Bill of Rights would be added to the document. "I should have considered it as one of the most distressing misfortunes of my life to be deprived of giving my aid and support to a system which, if amended (as I feel assured it will be) according to your proposals, cannot fail to give the people of the United States a greater degree of political freedom, and eventually as much national dignity, as falls to the lot of any nation on earth," Hancock told delegates at the ratifying convention. "I give my assent to the Constitution, in full confidence that the amendments proposed will soon become a part of the system."

Hancock's political popularity even helped catapult his lieutenant governor, Samuel Adams, into the governor's chair after Hancock passed to his reward. The popularity of this American patriot deserves to live on through many more generations.