John Hancock by Willard Sterne Randall
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John Hancock
First to Sign, First to Invest in Americas Independence
By Willard Sterne Randall
Dutton June 2025
Since I can remember the obnoxious habit of asking for a person’s John Hancock has meant sign this here as ostentatiously as possible as if my signing for or on some contract or log in sheet was an act against the king across the sea. Willard Sterne Randall has given us a vignette of what that means with not quite a biography of John Hancock.
You do get a sense of the man and his general nature, but the detail necessary for a truly good biography just isn’t present. What Randall has done is give us a history of John Hancock’s participation in the American Revolution from his first mild critique of British import export policy with “American Revenue Act” which limited colonial trade within the British Empire as a means to pay for the garrisoning of the ever westward expanding colonies to his election as President of the Continental Congress twice.
Randall goes far in this thin but well-researched volume to give a fuller understanding of the contributions of Hancock to the Revolution from the common misconception given to the public by his political rivals both John and Samuel Adams as well as the New England historian James Truslow Adams, whose Harper’s Monthly essay on Hancock, “Portrait of an Empty Barrel,” purported that “His chief resources were his money and his gout, the first always used to gain popularity and the second to prevent his loosing it.”
Willard Randall does mention Hancock’s disabling gout numerous times as well as the fact that he was one of the wealthiest men in New England, but he also brings to light his very up-front snubbing of the British Governor of Massachusetts Colony Francis Bernard, as well as his physical resistance to unlawful search and seizure of his ship the “Lydia.”
Randall is not hagiographic in his portrayal of Hancock as an utter failure as a military leader when he was in command of the Massachusetts Militia as they attacked the British garrison at Newport Rhode Island. His clear lack of military acumen led his forces to abandon his ally General John Sullivan, and while this was an inconclusive battle between the American forces and the last remaining British forces in New England Randall, there’s no excusing Hancock’s lack of ability or experience. Randall treats all this fairly as a mistake made by a man who felt pressure to serve in war much the same as his contemporaries did.
“First to Sign” shows the human cost and sorrow of John Hancock during the Revolution and formation of the country, first with the death of his infant daughter in 1777 while he was serving in the Congress at Philadelphia, and finally with the death of his son Johnny after a tragic ice skating accident in January of 1787. Randall paints the picture of an emotionally and physically wrecked man longing to recover his health and escape the scene of tragedy, as expressed in a letter to Henry Knox: ‘The Obtainment of health is now my pursuit. Journeying is much recommended to me and, as my situation is totally deranged by the untimely death of my dear and promising boy, I have no affectionate object to promise myself the enjoyment of what I leave.”
Randall does a good job of portraying exactly how chaotic and dysfunctional the United States national and regional governments were during the initial years of nationhood, with state governments rarely sending their delegates to Congress and actual skirmishes breaking out between Pennsylvania and Connecticut. This was the chaos of Hancock’s second and final term as President of the Continental Congress. No more joy was left in the man, only duty as he served as the first and third Governor of Massachusetts, largely as a ceremonial position while allowing his old friend and sometime-enemy Samuel Adams to do the governing. Hancock, much less happy and much less wealthy than in his glory days, would die in his bed in October of 1793.
Casper Hileman has a degree in History with a specialization in Military History and currently is employed as a historian for the tourism department in Suffolk Virginia. He has an upcoming review in the July 2025 issue of “The Journal of Military History.”