John Hancock
Nine Terms as Governor

Six primary documents from the years after Philadelphia, the military failure at Newport, nine terms of gubernatorial records, the Shays' Rebellion proclamation, and the death in office that ended the career of the man whose name defined the founding moment.

In the summer of 1778, Hancock led approximately 5,000 Massachusetts militia in a joint operation with French naval forces under the Comte d'Estaing to retake Newport, Rhode Island, from the British. The campaign collapsed. The French fleet, damaged in a storm and then in an engagement with the British, withdrew to Boston for repairs over Hancock's objections. Without naval support, the American forces were unable to hold their position and retreated from Rhode Island on August 30, 1778.

It was Hancock's only significant military command. The letters exchanged between Hancock and d'Estaing during the campaign, in which Hancock vigorously protested the French withdrawal, are the primary record of the episode. The correspondence is at the Massachusetts Historical Society and in the Papers of the Continental Congress at the Library of Congress.

Massachusetts adopted its state constitution in 1780, drafted primarily by John Adams. The constitution created a directly elected governor, a bicameral legislature, and a supreme judicial court. John Hancock was elected the first Governor of Massachusetts under the new constitution in 1780, receiving more than 90 percent of the votes cast.

He served as governor from 1780 to 1785, resigned due to ill health, and was reelected in 1787, serving until his death in 1793. Nine terms total. No other founder of his generation served as long in state executive office.

In the summer and fall of 1786, western Massachusetts farmers, many of them Revolutionary War veterans, rose in armed protest against the state government's debt collection policies and tax burden. The uprising, led by Daniel Shays, culminated in an attempt to seize the federal armory at Springfield in January 1787. State troops dispersed the rebels.

Hancock had left the governorship in 1785 due to gout; the suppression of Shays' Rebellion fell to his successor, James Bowdoin. When Hancock was reelected in 1787, he issued a proclamation extending mercy and forgiveness to participants in the rebellion who would take an oath of allegiance to Massachusetts before September 12, 1787. The proclamation is at the Massachusetts Archives. It was controversial, critics argued he was too lenient, but it helped restore stability.

The Massachusetts Ratifying Convention of January–February 1788 was one of the closest and most consequential of the state ratification debates. Anti-Federalist sentiment was strong; the Constitution was in danger of rejection. Hancock, presiding as Governor, was ill during much of the convention, some suspected strategically so, to avoid committing before the outcome was clear.

As the debate narrowed, Hancock proposed a compromise that became known as the "Massachusetts Formula" or "recommendatory amendments", ratifying the Constitution while attaching a list of recommended amendments for the First Congress to consider. The strategy broke the deadlock. Massachusetts ratified 187 to 168. The formula was subsequently adopted by New Hampshire, Virginia, and New York. It directly influenced the drafting of the Bill of Rights.

When George Washington was inaugurated as the first President on April 30, 1789, Hancock, as governor of Massachusetts, wrote to congratulate him. The exchange of letters between Hancock and Washington from this period is at Founders Online and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

There was also a protocol dispute: when Washington visited Boston in October 1789, Hancock, as governor of a sovereign state, initially declined to call on Washington first, arguing that as governor he outranked a visiting federal officer on Massachusetts soil. Washington declined to call first. After a day of standoff, Hancock, pleading gout, relented and received Washington at his home. The episode is documented in Washington's diary and in contemporary Boston newspaper accounts.

John Hancock died on October 8, 1793, at his home on Beacon Hill in Boston. He was fifty-six years old. He had been serving as governor at the time of his death, his ninth term. He had suffered from gout for years, and his health had declined significantly in his final months in office.

The Boston Columbian Centinel published the announcement of his death on October 9, 1793. The Massachusetts General Court suspended business. His funeral was attended by what contemporary accounts described as the largest gathering of people ever assembled in Boston to that date. He was buried at the Granary Burying Ground, on Tremont Street, where Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and the victims of the Boston Massacre are also interred.

His estate was found to be in considerable debt at his death, his philanthropic spending and the costs of political life had depleted the fortune he inherited. His wife Dorothy Quincy Hancock lived until 1830.