Seven primary documents from the years that made him. The smuggling charges, the night at Lexington, the presidency of Congress, and the signature that everyone has seen and almost nobody can explain correctly.
John Hancock inherited a merchant empire from his uncle Thomas in 1764. By 1768 he was one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts. In May 1768, British customs officials seized his sloop Liberty at Boston's Long Wharf on charges of smuggling Madeira wine without paying the required duties. A riot followed the seizure. The customs officials were attacked by a crowd and had to flee for their safety.
The Crown prosecuted Hancock for smuggling, a case that could have cost him £9,000 in penalties. John Adams, then a young Boston lawyer, defended him. The prosecution collapsed after five months and was dropped without a verdict in March 1769.
The Liberty affair made Hancock a public figure in Boston and a target of the Crown. The customs records documenting the seizure are at the National Archives. The Boston Gazette covered the riot, its accounts survive at the Massachusetts Historical Society and through the American Antiquarian Society's newspaper archive.
On March 5, 1774, the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, John Hancock delivered the annual oration commemorating the event at Old South Meeting House. It was the most prominent public address of his pre-revolutionary career. The text was printed in Boston immediately afterward and circulated through the colonies.
Tell me, ye bloody butchers! ye villains high and low! ye wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed the inhuman deed! do you not feel the goads and stings of conscious guilt pierce through your savage bosoms? Though some of you may think yourselves exalted to a height that bids defiance to human justice, and others shroud yourselves beneath the mask of hypocrisy, and build your hopes of safety on the low arts of cunning, chicane and falsehood; yet do you not sometimes feel the gnawings of that worm which never dies?
On the night of April 18, 1775, Hancock and Samuel Adams were staying at the home of Reverend Jonas Clarke in Lexington, Massachusetts. British troops under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith were marching from Boston, under orders from General Thomas Gage, to seize military stores at Concord and, according to Patriot intelligence, possibly to arrest Hancock and Adams as well.
Paul Revere rode from Boston to warn them. He arrived at Lexington around midnight and alerted Hancock and Adams. William Dawes arrived shortly after by a different route. When British troops appeared on Lexington Green at dawn on April 19, Hancock reportedly wanted to join the militiamen and fight. Samuel Adams argued that their duty was in government, not on the field. The two men left Lexington by carriage before the British arrived.
Revere's account of the night, written in a letter to Jeremy Belknap of the Massachusetts Historical Society around 1798, is the most detailed primary record of what happened at Lexington before the shot. It is at the MHS.
I informed him [Hancock] of the purpose of the Officers. He seemed full of spirit, and insisted on remaining. He was persuaded to retire, as I was informed.
Hancock wrote to Dorothy Quincy, his fiancée, on April 8, 1775, from Lexington, ten days before the night of the alarm. He described his activities and his plans to join her at Fairfield. The letter is at the Clements Library, University of Michigan.
On May 24, 1775, John Hancock was elected President of the Second Continental Congress, replacing Peyton Randolph who had returned to Virginia. The vote is recorded in the Journals of the Continental Congress at the Library of Congress. He was thirty-eight years old.
As President, Hancock presided over the Congress through the most consequential period in American history, the nomination of Washington as Commander-in-Chief, the debate over independence, the adoption of the Declaration, and the early years of the war. He served as President until October 1777.
On June 19, 1775, Hancock wrote to General Artemas Ward at Cambridge, Washington's predecessor in command, informing him of Washington's appointment and of Ward's own commission. The letter is at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Congress have appointed George Washington Esqr. General and Commander in Chief of the Army of the United Colonies, who will set out for your Camp in a Day or two — upon his Arrival there you will deliver up the Command of the Army to him, keeping your Own Commission, and acting under his Orders — Be careful in your Department...
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. As President, Hancock authenticated the document so that copies could be printed and sent to the colonial legislatures and to Washington for reading to the troops. Those printed copies, the broadsheets distributed throughout America in the critical days of July 1776, bore the names of only two people: John Hancock, as President, and Charles Thomson, the Secretary of Congress, set in type.
In other words, at the moment of maximum risk, when the British were reading the broadsheets as acts of high treason, the only name publicly associated with the Declaration was Hancock's.
The familiar parchment document bearing the fifty-six signatures was not signed by most delegates until August 2, 1776. Hancock signed first, as President, as was proper to his position. The "King George could read it without his spectacles" story has no contemporary primary-source support and does not appear in the historical record until decades after the fact. The document that Hancock signed was to remain in America, not travel to Britain.
Inclosed you will receive a Declaration of Independence set forth by the American Congress, which I am directed to transmit to you, and request you to have it proclaimed in the most public manner, and as soon as possible... The important Consequences to the American States from this Declaration of Independence, considered as the Ground and Foundation of a future Government, will naturally suggest the Propriety of proclaiming it in such a Manner that the People may be universally informed of it.
On July 6, 1776, Hancock wrote to Washington directing him to have the Declaration proclaimed publicly. Washington had it read to the troops on July 9, 1776, on the Common in New York City. That evening, after the reading, soldiers and civilians pulled down the statue of King George III on Bowling Green. Washington's account of the reading, and his criticism of the destruction of the statue, is at Founders Online.
The General hopes this important Event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer, and soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms: And that he is now in the service of a State, possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest Honours of a free Country.
In October 1777, after two years as President of Congress, Hancock requested a leave of absence to return to Massachusetts. He was not received warmly by all, Samuel Adams, who had known Hancock since before the Revolution, had grown cool toward him in the years of his prominence. But George Washington arranged a military escort for Hancock as he traveled back to Boston.
The correspondence between Washington and Hancock during the presidency of Congress runs to hundreds of letters at Founders Online. Washington's letters to Hancock as President of Congress constitute one of the primary documentary records of the early war years, every significant military request, supply shortage, and strategic discussion passed through Hancock's desk.