Transcript

Introduction and Overview

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to Hub History where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 2 86 King Hancock, the radical influence of a moderate founding father with Brooke Barbier.

[0:23] Hi, I’m Jake in just a few minutes.
I’m gonna be joined by Brooke Barbier who’s the author of a new biography of John Hancock.
That’s out this month in King Hancock, the radical influence of a moderate founding father brooke paints the portrait of a walking contradiction, one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, but a man of the people, a merchant who made his fortune in the warm embrace of empire, but signed his name first for independence and an slaver who called for freedom.
Perhaps most of all he’s portrayed as a moderate in a town of radicals.
John Hancock didn’t leave behind the same carefully preserved indexed and cross referenced lifetime of papers like our old friend John Adams, he wasn’t immortalized as the indispensable man like George Washington.
But brooke weaves together the details that could be found in portraits, artifacts, official records and surviving letters to create a nuanced portrait of a founder who should be remembered for more than just a famous signature.
But before we talk about the revolutionary John Hancock, I just want to pause and thank the generous listeners who support hub history on Patreon.

[1:39] I know I make it look easy, but this podcast actually takes a lot of work.
Somebody asked me recently what I put into every episode and when I tally up the research, writing, recording and editing, I think it must be around 30 hours a show.
Luckily, I don’t put a price on my time, but there are costs other than time, research, databases, audio tools, hardware, and of course, media hosting, our Patreon sponsors take care of those costs by earmarking $2.05 dollars or in a few generous cases, even $20 or more a month for hub history.
So all I have to worry about is finding the hours and putting in the work and for that, I’m deeply grateful.

[2:26] So, to everybody out there who supports the show. Thank you.
And if you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy.
Just go to patreon dot com slash hubor or visit hubor dot com and click on the support us link and thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.
I’m joined now by Brooke Barbier. Brooke is a public historian, tour guide and the proprietor of yield tavern tours, offering a boozy look at Boston’s revolutionary history.
Speaking of the revolution. Brooke is our first repeat guest.
Now she joined the show back in March of 2017 to talk about her first book, Boston and the American Revolution, a Town versus an Empire.
Brooke holds a phd in American history from Boston College with a specialty in social and cultural life in Boston during the revolutionary era.
Her new book is out this month, King Hancock, the radical influence of a moderate founding father in it.
She examines revolutionary Boston through the life of John Hancock, including his deep longing for connection to friends and family, his love of entertaining and his embrace of fashion in crafting his public image.
Brooke Barbier. Welcome to the show or should I say? Welcome back to the show.

Brooke Barbier’s Previous Appearance on the Show

Brooke Barbier:
[3:52] Yeah. So happy to be here again with you, Jake.

Jake:
[3:55] I think you’re actually our first two time guest and for listeners who haven’t been around since the very, very beginning, Brooke was our guest.
I, I think it was episode 22 which was a very long time ago.

Brooke Barbier:
[4:07] Yeah, I think back in 2017.

Jake:
[4:09] Yeah, we are still baby podcasters at the time. For sure.

Brooke Barbier:
[4:13] Yeah, it was really fun to be with you guys.

Jake:
[4:15] Your first book was a broader survey of Boston’s role in the American revolution and sort of in the, the wider imperial crisis, the years leading up to the revolution.
The new book is King Hancock, the radical influence of a moderate founding father.
What made you want to tighten the lens on on one founder, one figure from Boston history and do a biography instead of a sort of a wider look at Boston.

Brooke Barbier:
[4:43] Yeah, thanks for the question. So I own a tour company in Boston.
And one of the questions we often get asked.
Both me and my tour guides is more about John Hancock.
He is this well recognized name. Nearly every American knows his name, but few know much more about him beyond the signature on the Declaration of Independence.
And so consistently, I would get questions asking, how did he make his money?
What was he famous for? What was his job that I wanted to do a deeper dive on this really influential person in Boston and Massachusetts history that has such name ID.
But that people know pretty little about.

Jake:
[5:29] So much of what we know about John Hancock, like you say, beyond that famous signature.
Most of what we know about him, he inherited in 17 64 from his uncle Thomas, the famous Beacon Hill mansion, the merchant empire, and this enormous fortune, one of the largest fortunes in North America at the time.
But what was John Hancock’s life like before that, what was his early life like before he even joined Thomas’s household.

Brooke Barbier:
[5:56] Oh, I wish we knew. We really don’t have much, much information about that time in his life at all.
He grew up in Braintree and his father also a John Hancock was a minister in Braintree.
But we really know so little about those early years until he was seven.
When his dad passes away, he had an older sister and a younger brother.
And because he was the eldest boy, I write that he won the 18th century birthing lottery twice because he was the eldest boy.
And so that made him the one that would be, was designated to go live with his uncle in Boston Mary. His older sister wouldn’t be chosen.
She was the eldest, but she wasn’t born a boy. So you had to be both born first and be a boy to move up to Uncle Thomas’s mansion.

Jake:
[6:51] It’s interesting that, that was such a, a benefit for him because it seems like a really traumatic experience for a seven year old to have his family sort of ripped into his.
He doesn’t stay with his mother and his sister.
He goes to a different town, a different family.

Brooke Barbier:
[7:06] I try to get at that because I, I say that while some would say this is such an enormous privilege that you have now to, to, to go to enormous wealth, how traumatic that would be to lose your father and the only home you’ve known and then move to this big bustling city.

The Trauma and Privilege of Hancock’s Childhood

 

[7:28] Braintree is a small town compared to Boston and go live with an uncle who, by all accounts is a shrewd man, a calculating shrewd man.
And so we don’t have any records of what life was like for him.
But it’s easy as you, as you said in it. And I, I think to imagine, how difficult it would be for a young boy to have a new guardian in a new city and one that was a very successful businessman and probably the pressure you’d also feel to inherit that business, a business you didn’t create.

Jake:
[8:07] I was really struck one of the early passages in the book, you put the reader into the shoes of seven year old Johnny Hancock as he’s first experiencing sort of the, the sights and sounds and smells of Boston.
Take us there for a minute contrast what Braintree was like at the time compared to what he was seeing and experiencing in Boston and then also in Uncle Thomas’s household.

Brooke Barbier:
[8:30] Boston was probably seven times the population size.
So this is a big city, even though Boston at the time was just two miles from tip to tip it, it had a lot going on.
While Boston didn’t actually produce many goods necessarily because of that harbor, there would be a lot of noise, a lot of activity, people are not making their money from the land, they are making their money from the harbor.
And so that alone would be different for young Johnny.
But then his uncle had this extraordinary house.
It was extraordinary both in size and materials because it was built of stone and most homes at that time weren’t built of stone.
It, it’s quite expensive, but it was also at the top of Beacon Hill.
Beacon Hill. For those that are listening is a very familiar neighborhood in Boston today.
A name for the Beacon that sat atop the hill.
But Beacon Hill at the time was pretty uninhabited today. It’s a very expensive place to rent or own a home.
But in the 18th century, it was mostly uninhabited. And there Thomas Hancock plonked his big mansion down when there were few other houses around and he started buying up land around on, on around Beacon Hill.

[9:47] The mansion just had the finest interiors and what may surprise folks.
And this is just a good reminder, it was filled with goods imported from London.
These were British subjects proudly British.
The best way to display your taste and your wealth was through goods from London.
And so sometimes we think of these the revolution as preordained or you know, people not wanting to be British.
But it, that was the height of fashion and gentility was to be able to, to import from London.
And so Hancock would have seen things that most colonists wouldn’t see oil paintings, silver dishes, a room just for the China, just for the China, there was a separate room, so just unmatched.
Well that Thomas Hancock had.

Jake:
[10:39] So where does Thomas Hancock’s fortune come from? Is it inherited wealth or is he more of a self made man?

Brooke Barbier:
[10:46] This is what’s so interesting about the story is that this helps to show the man behind, the the mansion Thomas Hancock is that he had an older brother and a younger brother and both of them were sent to Harvard, but the family didn’t have money to send Thomas.

Thomas Hancock’s rise from bookseller to wealthy merchant

 

[11:04] So he began as an apprentice in Boston to a bookseller.
And then that Thomas went on to build the largest fortune in Massachusetts in his single lifetime.
And we, we might think, oh yeah, that makes sense. Colonists.
They’re scrappy, they’re just generating money.
But no, at this time, general generational wealth was a thing.
And if you were wealthy in the colonies.
It had likely come from a couple of generations before you.

Jake:
[11:37] Well, tell us about what was the business that he built within that single generation?

Brooke Barbier:
[11:42] He was a merchant. So importing and exporting goods.
He began just by having a bookshop in Boston, but then be began diversifying, what he was importing and exporting.
And then he eventually went on to supply the British army with provisions during um the many wars with between England and France.
And that’s how he made a lot of his money is supplying the British Army.
He also bought up a ton of land in New England and owned, um, other buildings in Boston, quite a large portfolio for somebody who started as a bookseller.

Jake:
[12:23] So he has this opulent mansion on the top of the most dominant terrain feature around.
And this is the, the Hancock household. But when we talk about the household, it’s more than just Thomas and his wife Lydia and little Johnny, who else made up the Hancock household.

Brooke Barbier:
[12:43] There were servants both paid and enslaved. The best that I can figure is that there were white female servants.
And then there were black female and male enslaved servants, servants being sort of a euphemism sometimes for slave, but they were enslaved men and women in the Hancock House.
As many as seven servants tending to the needs of these three residents.

Jake:
[13:09] How would little Johnny have seen his place within and to use your trying to a phrase to, to see his place within a multi racial and multi status household.

Brooke Barbier:
[13:21] He had enormous privilege. He is the white eldest boy of a very wealthy man, but Thomas runs that house.
Almost everyone was a dependent in colonial America.
If you were a child, you were dependent on your father.
If you were a wife, you were dependent on your husband. If you were an enslaved person, you were dependent on your enslavers.
So while Johnny certainly have enormous privilege as a child, he does what his uncle wants him to do.

Jake:
[13:54] One of the things that Thomas wanted young Johnny to do to make a rough transition is to get an education.
And today, of course, if people know anything about John Hancock, they know his signature so much so that the name John Hancock is basically synonymous with the signature in America.
Give me your John Hancock on this delivery form and the book, you point out that handwriting was young Johnny’s best subject at school.
So what kind of education did he get after he came to live in?
Privilege uh with Uncle Thomas?

Brooke Barbier:
[14:26] He enrolled at Boston Latin school, which was a short trip down from the mansion and there you were taught in classics.
This was to be at Boston Latin school meant that you might go on to, to Harvard to become a minister.
You really, it wasn’t exactly practical information.
Um So in addition to working on your reading and writing skills, you were also reading classics, learning Latin, uh perhaps Greek as well.
So it was an education that was mostly impractical for, for most professions.
But Johnny wasn’t going to have most professions. He had a career path laid out for him, whether he wanted that or not.

Johnny’s transition from Harvard to working for his uncle

 

[15:11] His, his dad and his grandfather, both John Hancocks both became ministers.
And what I write is that it’s easy to imagine that when Johnny was a young boy, he probably thought I’m gonna be a minister too.
And even if that was maybe where he wanted to go, it was probably very clear to him early on in his life once he went to live with Thomas, that that wasn’t going to be the route, the career route that he was going to take.
So he went to Boston Latin school and then went to Harvard and graduated from Harvard and then entered into working for his uncle’s Merchant House.

Jake:
[15:51] How does he get the practical business education that Harvard wasn’t teaching at the time?
There’s no H BS yet at that point. So how does he learn how to, to run this huge merchant house?

Brooke Barbier:
[16:02] He learns by experience jake, but he’s not that skilled.
What I write is that you may have heard that second generational business owners sometimes have a harder time running the business because they might not have the passion for it that their parents or, you know, aunt or uncle, whoever started the business does or they might not be as shrewd and, or as business savvy or as good as building.
Um you know, is adept at building relationships and I think Johnny lacked all three of those things. I’m not sure he had the passion for it.
He wasn’t great at building the relationships early on. He gets much better at that later.
But he uh his, he brings a very brash attitude to a business that he doesn’t know much about.

[16:53] So he, his uncle introduces them around. Boston sends letters to London saying that John is joining the merchant house and then Thomas wants John to go overseas to London to meet many of the partners and learn more about the business there.
And John has a mostly find time interacting and meeting merchants there.
He loves the shopping that he can do there. He loves the diversion that London offers, but he does get into it with one of the a long standing partner of Thomas’s and Thomas has to break off the relationship because Johnny had ruined it, had, had soured it.

Jake:
[17:35] Poison the, well, yeah.

Brooke Barbier:
[17:36] Yeah. So many of these things, Hancock gets much better at as he goes along in life, especially, like I said, those relationships, but this isn’t a business that he started or necessarily even asked for.
And so you see that he’s very rough early on.

Jake:
[17:55] You know, he gets better at building relationships later in life.
But you describe some of the letters that he writes home from, from college, but especially when he’s, when he’s in, in England a little bit later as expressing just this desperate need for connection with friends and family, especially.

John Hancock’s Desperate Need for Connection

 

[18:14] What do you think that tells us about John Hancock as a person?

Brooke Barbier:
[18:18] He wanted to belong. I would say that he is lonely.
But I think that’s, that’s probably a little bit too strong but not, it’s almost there lonely is probably almost the word for it.
He, he, he so wants to belong and he wants people to like him.
And I think this is why he gets good at getting people to like him because he really appreciates the attention and admiration that people can give him.
And I think Jake, if, if I’m allowed to just speculate, which I don’t usually do as a historian because if there aren’t sources, I don’t say, you know, I, I’m not going to make an argument but it’s easy to imagine that a boy who loses their dad and they’re essentially living with their nuclear family and goes to live in a new city with a pretty hard nosed guy, would desperately want to feel that he was accepted and seen and I’m, I’m not sure he gets that uh when he’s a younger, younger man and he, so he’s, he’s always looking for it.

Jake:
[19:22] Yeah. The armchair therapist finds the easy connection between sort of the being torn away from all his family connections and then trying to replace them the whole life through.

Brooke Barbier:
[19:32] Yeah. So, II, I don’t think it’s too big of a leap. I don’t exactly make that leap in the book.
I, I want you to read his letters and, and feel the loneliness and the longing in them.
And then readers can make their, make their own conclusions because we just don’t have the sources for him to say, I am sad because, or I feel this way because, but yes, if, if I’m, if I’m putting on my, my arm, if I’m sitting in my armchair, my psychologist armchair, I would say, yeah, he went through a lot as a young boy, it shaped, it shaped the way he saw the world and himself.

Jake:
[20:11] And there was more trauma to, to come as a young man as well.
Uh How did John Hancock’s life suddenly change in 17 64.

Brooke Barbier:
[20:20] Uncle Thomas dies and quite suddenly, he’s walking up the stairs at the old statehouse called old Statehouse today townhouse then and collapses and dies.
And Hancock is 27 years old and, thomas’ wife Lydia inherits the house on top of Beacon Hill money and the enslaved people who works there and Hancock gets everything else.
So the business, the land, everything else goes, goes to Hancock and right then and there overnight or not even overnight, you know, right.
Then that day he becomes one of the most prominent men in Massachusetts.

Jake:
[21:03] He had been kind of a junior partner in the business up to that moment.
Right. He had been helping to run it, but was he?

Brooke Barbier:
[21:10] He’d been named a partner. Uh Thomas wrote to his associates saying he’s been named a partner in the house of Hancock.
But I mean, he, he hadn’t been in the business that long to, to, to be able to run it in the same way that Thomas had.
And Thomas was the one who was elected to political office.
And this was natural. If you were wealthy, you were usually serving some political office.
And then now all of a sudden, John Hancock is looked to as the person who should be filling political office.
So his life changes over because he becomes this, he comes into all of this wealth, but that wealth then attracts political offices and he is now deemed suitable for public office.
So he, his first political position is a selectman, which is sort of like a city councilor for Boston.
And that, that begins at all.

Jake:
[22:11] With a master stroke of timing. He’s coming into this fortune, this position in his, now his business and his first political offices in, 17 64 and 17 65 when there was nothing else happening in the wider British Empire or its North American Colonies.

Brooke Barbier:
[22:30] Take your time, kid, you get used to the political scene. Nothing going on here. No big deal.

John Hancock’s Political Awakening

Jake:
[22:36] Listeners, I’m sure have, have, have heard all of our past episodes about the Stamp Act riots and the Liberty riot and other acts of colonial resistance.
We’ll assume they know a little background and just jump straight into how did John Hancock personally react to the new series of taxes um that parliament levied in the 17 sixties.

Brooke Barbier:
[22:55] The stand up he doesn’t like, but he initially says we have to submit to it.
And then you really see his political awakening over maybe a six month period in these letters where he’s writing to his partners in London about the Stamp Act and he really his, his arguments shift from, just purely economic.
Our fortunes will be destroyed to also your fortunes will be destroyed.
If you keep doing this, this is gonna destroy trade between between us.
But then he shifts into more ideological reasons, for, for opposing the Stamp Act that this is, you know, tyrannical and then even constitutional reasons saying this isn’t, this is against our right as a British subject.

[23:47] When the Stamp Act riots break out in 17 65 excuse me, when the first riot against Andrew Oliver breaks out in 17 65 Hancock is happy with it.
He says that he hopes the same spirit will prevail throughout the continent.
And this, this is following, as your listeners likely know, the sort of prescribed orchestrated violence that was allowed in 18th century, that if the, if the violence is redressing a wrong, it’s acceptable.
And then once the wrong is redressed, then it, the violence has to stop.
So Hancock was fine with it. But when less than two weeks later, they taught uh a mob targets Thomas Hutchinson’s home, Hancock does not like that at all because that goes against the prescribed, system of violence that was allowed, and it targets a man of privilege and extreme wealth and it, they enter Hutchinson’s home and destroy his belongings.
And one can imagine that for Hancock in particular, that would literally hit close to home.
So he is completely opposed to the Hutchinson riot, but he has to be pretty careful not to, not to just say that out loud.
These are pretty scary men. He, he, he isn’t yet King Hancock in Boston.
He isn’t yet a town leader, so he is opposed to it, but he also wants to.

[25:15] Get the mob and the men comprising the mob on his side and to act to demonstrate peacefully going forward.

Jake:
[25:24] Among other things, it sounds like he’s walking a pretty fine line.
You know, the, the sons of Liberty are becoming this prominent political force at the time.
They’re sort of enforcing the party line with a stick in a lot of ways.
But, yeah, Hancock doesn’t want to comply with the Stamp Act, but he does want to keep trading within the system that’s made him and his family so fantastically wealthy.
So, how does he thread that needle?

The Evolution of John Hancock’s Views on Independence

Brooke Barbier:
[25:53] This is what is, it is actually the a really great illustration I think for, for students of history to look at is, sometimes we tend to think of the American revolution as this inevitable force that just carries people along.
But in 17 65 Hancock opposes the Stamp Act but, but he’s not for independence.
I mean, that, that’s a completely ridiculous notion.
He still wants to trade with London. This is how his family has made money for a generation.
He simply doesn’t want to have to pay the tax on it.
And so we see this over the next 89 years with his trade where he’s pretty shrewd.
He’ll say send me this, send a ship with goods, if, if possible, you know, if the Sand Act is repealed, I want the first ship out of London to be coming to me, but don’t send it if it’s, if it’s not gonna be, you know, if the sand pack is still in effect, don’t send the ship out.
So he, he completely wants to still do business with the British Empire.
An errant tax or two doesn’t affect the way that he feels about being proud to be a part of the British Empire and wanting to continue to do business.

Jake:
[27:13] In the book, I think you do a good job of sort of guiding people into a mindset where they’re not seeing the revolution is just, an inevitable progression of events where today we see the Stamp Act protests as sort of the first step toward revolution.
And then after that first ship arrives in Boston, ironically, the first ship carrying word of the, the repeal of the Stamp Act is a Hancock ship.
He fund helps fund the party here in Boston. But it’s, it’s not seen as a continuation of a march toward revolution.
It’s seen as a welcome correction from parliament that, oh, you’re right.
We did overstep our authority. Let’s walk this back.

Brooke Barbier:
[27:53] That’s right. And the Declaratory Act and the promise to tax that they reserve the right to tax in all cases whatsoever.
That’s menacing language. But for the most part, this is seen as a mistake by parliament and it was corrected and you hear praise to the British Empire and I, I understand the, the idea of looking back and seeing, seeing that the, the sandback rights of 17 65 war breaks out 10 years later, you think, oh, that must have been a really intense 10 years with lots of stuff going on back to back to back.
But in fact, there’s, there’s other periods of calm in there that Hancock really enjoys.

Jake:
[28:36] One of the ways he enjoys the period of calm is by having a portrait of himself commissioned from somebody who is today, probably the most famous painter whose work hangs in the M fa uh John Singleton Copley.
Can you describe briefly that first Copley portrait of Hancock?
And then also tell us a little bit about what it meant at the time to own a painting like that.

Brooke Barbier:
[29:01] The painting is when he is seated on a chair, you get a length of his full body, but he’s not standing, he’s seated.
And what’s great about this painting is you get a view of his clothing.
So he has silk stockings on buckled shoes, knee breeches, and an embroidered coat, gilded gilt, beautifully embroidered gilded clothing.
And that, that is a signature of his. You don’t ever see him in a painting without the the golden accents and a powdered wig.
And he’s sitting at a desk holding a quill and it’s easy to look at this and say, oh, this must have been right after the declaration of independence.
But in fact, it was, it was done 11 years prior and he’s sitting in front of his merchant ledgers to be able to afford a portrait, was meant that you were in about the top 1% of colonial America.
It was expensive to pay, but it was also expensive to fit.
You literally couldn’t work for the hours while Copley who took longer than most painted you.
And uh Hancock goes on to be painted by Copley again.
There’s two more portraits, but only one is and uh public collection.

[30:17] And I talk about the periods in his life when he gets his portraits done because I, he kind of gets them every five or six years.
And it’s clear that he’s trying to mark a certain moment in his life.
And he often will pay for a portrait of somebody else who wouldn’t be able to afford it on their own.
And um in, in 17 65 this portrait of him shows a man who’s successful.

Jake:
[30:47] It’s interesting how you point out how he commissions these portraits to commemorate important points in his life or transitions in his life.
Because there’s also an early cameo portrait that he had no control over.
Where um you pointed out that a teenaged John John Hancock makes an appearance in a 17 50 needlepoint of Boston Common.
Uh How does that portrayal of this young Hancock?
It just happens, happens to be dropping in on this pastoral scene compared to the portraits that he more tightly controlled later on in life.

Brooke Barbier:
[31:23] The needle point is done by Hannah Otis who was about 18 at the time, James Otis, sister and mercy Otis Warren sister.
And we don’t know exactly that.
It’s Hancock’s family, but it is most likely Thomas and Lydia Hancock, his aunt and uncle and then Johnny on horseback.
And what strikes me about this needle point is that behind Johnny, you see a young black, enslaved boy, I mean, it, it’s a young man behind him, dressed in uh dressed in fine clothing as well. Tending to Johnny.
And what I point out is that Hancock in most of his portraits, he’s portrayed by himself.
But it’s this needle point that really captures actually all that went into making who Hancock was the wealth, the privilege, the house on the hill and then also the enslaved labor that his family benefited from for decades.
That that’s actually the real Hancock. You wouldn’t have seen Hancock in the 18th century without likely a black man right nearby, either driving his carriage or tending to him.
And it would have been rare to just see him by himself.
If you entered into his home, there would be servants tending to him.
He wasn’t a man who just would be out on his own.

Jake:
[32:51] Yeah, which is in a sense you would get from the the seated portraits that Copley or anybody else did throughout his life.

Brooke Barbier:
[32:58] He’s stoic in the chair looking over the, the ledgers would really, yes.

Jake:
[33:02] Tending to business, right?

Brooke Barbier:
[33:05] When, really there he had many, many people to help him also run the House of Hancock.

Jake:
[33:11] We we don’t need to do a full accounting of the liberty riot in 17 68.
I’ll encourage listeners to go back to episode 2 24 where I talked about that in depth.
But can you give us just a sense of how Hancock went from celebrating the corrective action of parliament and repealing the, the Stamp Act to openly flagrantly.
And as you put it somewhere in the book, swaggering resisting the Townsend Act. A few years later.

Brooke Barbier:
[33:40] Hancock is so lucky that the Townshend duties aligned with his financial interests because here we see his political interests aligned with his financial interests, in that when he wants to tell off a customs official for being too nosy and violating their what they’re allowed to do.
Townspeople are happy that he’s telling off the customs official because they hate these customs, this new customs board that had been established in Boston, they hate them too.
So Hancock is so lucky that these two things converge because they don’t always once the non importation agreement begins and Ernest Hancock’s business suffers incredibly as, as do many but, but he mostly mostly sticks with it with a little bit of trouble.
But in 17 68 he gets the chance to display his power and his influence by telling off a customs official.
And the people love him for that.
They want to haza him all the way home. They’re, they’re so thrilled.

Joseph Warren brokers a deal for Hancock’s financial interests.

Jake:
[34:47] He was incredibly lucky that his financial interests, aligned with his political interests and sort of the, you know, the, the spirit of the mob at the time, there was a moment at which Joseph Warren helped to broker a deal between Hancock and the local customs collectors of the customs officials.
And then Sam Adams and James Otis paid him a visit and they convinced him to back right back out of that deal.
So what, what deal did Joseph Warren broker? And then how did he find himself not honoring that agreement?

Brooke Barbier:
[35:23] Hancock essentially said, I’ll put up my bond for the smuggling.
You know what they were accusing him of if you return my ship because they had seized liberty and tied it to the, their warship in the harbor.
So if he can’t make that ship, he can’t, if he can’t, excuse me, if he can’t use that ship, he can’t make money.
And so that was the deal he brokered, it was pretty straightforward and the customs officials were also inclined to make a deal because they had heard rumors that a mob might be forming in, in further defense of Hancock.
And then his house was full one night, people were coming by and telling him you made a bad deal.
You can’t, you can’t make this deal.
And we get a couple of accounts from British customs officials that say that Hancock was.

[36:14] Under the sway of Adams, Samuel Adams and James Otis that while he didn’t go along with them, he couldn’t help himself.
We kind of get, they’re kind of making him sound as if he isn’t a free thinker rather than someone who’s being intimidated.
And that’s a charge that Hancock gets throughout his life.
He, that he’s sort of a dupe and he just goes along and that Samuel Adams was a puppet master and that isn’t really as things as things bear out in Hancock’s life.
But a British two British sources seem to think that that’s why, that they said we, he didn’t agree with James Otis and Samuel Adams, but he went along anyway because it was safer to do that, safer to his own personal safety, if there’s a mob going to mobilize in defense of Hancock.
But then Hancock cuts a deal with the British, that mob is not gonna want to defend Hancock anymore.

Jake:
[37:14] At the same time, all that is happening. He’s also getting more deeply involved in politics and, and the two, his political career and his business career had, had been sort of separate and then they, they start to sort of collide at this point.
What happened when Hancock finally, after years as a selectman got nominated to the Governor’s Council.

Brooke Barbier:
[37:34] He serves as the in the House of Representatives in 17 68 and you would only be elected to the Governor’s.
You, you could be nominated to the Governor’s Council, but the governor can veto anybody.
And Governor Francis Bernard is none too happy to veto Hancock and say that he can’t serve on the Governor’s Council.
And this isn’t surprising Hancock had developed by 17 68.
He has a reputation for being confrontational and aggressive with the British customs officials.
The idea of denying you a post until you sort of came into line isn’t something new Bernard then has a meeting with Hancock and says, you know, I hope that you can become a friend to the government.
Thomas Hutchinson when he becomes governor. A couple of years later does the same thing offering Hancock a post on the Council, if Hancock will just go along with Hutchinson’s program.

Jake:
[38:35] But she’s unwilling to do. It sounds like.

Brooke Barbier:
[38:37] Yes, he is. He, he says I am not interested in politics.

Hancock’s disinterest in politics and focus on business.

 

[38:42] I’m interested in my business and that was sort of that period of calm between 17 70 17 73.
When we really see Hancock pull far, far back from politics and Samuel Adams and engage in things that, that he likes more.

Jake:
[39:00] Well, before we get to that calm period, he gets very close to the sons of liberty as their power is rising.
And you know, we see the, the famous uh August 17 69 dinner in Dorchester where, John Adams is there, John Hancock is there and about 350 people are attending a party that’s thrown by this supposedly secretive organization.
What does that tell us about the public power, the public position of the Suns? By 17 69.

Brooke Barbier:
[39:34] They have an ability to get people to join their forces because there is a low grade threat underneath it all.
And at sometimes it’s not even low grade. It’s just very in your face, an obvious threat.
But even John Adams didn’t want to attend that party in 17 69 he had somewhere else to be, but he said that he was afraid to not attend because he was worried that people would wonder who he was loyal to, and John Adams isn’t living in Boston full time the way Hancock is at this time, but Samuel Adams is a cousin of his and he still feels this pressure.
And so it’s very easy to imagine that Hancock who doesn’t write about this event likely felt the same way that it’s it’s easier to just go along with it, and, and Taza and toast and you privately not engage as much as you’d like.
Hancock also loves the party.
So it would be, it would be irresistible to him to go, be able to drink and eat with, with men and be in some ways that star of the show.
His carriage is the one that leads them all home.
So um that, that is just so exciting for Hancock. A big party with plenty of drink.

Jake:
[41:03] Well, speaking of toasts, one of the toasts they drank at that party was to the non importation agreement, which you mentioned briefly before.
Can you remind listeners what the idea of non importation was and then how that affected Hancock’s business?

Brooke Barbier:
[41:19] The non importation agreement essentially said that beginning January 1st 17 69 you can’t import British goods because then you’d have to pay the township duties.
And we’re not, we don’t want to pay the township duties where things get sticky for Hancock is that there were certain things that you could import from England and Hancock debts.
And in 17 69 this gets him into trouble.
The other thing that gets him into trouble is merchants on their ships would sometimes carry goods for smaller merchants who didn’t have their own ships or goods for goods for anybody.
And when somebody else was sending one of those goods that were expressly against the boycott on a Hancock ship, this makes him look like he’s not going along with the agreement.

Jake:
[42:02] On a Hancock ship.

Non-importation agreements and Hancock’s business troubles

Brooke Barbier:
[42:10] And so it’s a fairly simple agreement on its face, but it’s actually not uh because then they had to revise it and say, no, no, you can’t carry ships and you can’t carry cargo anymore. That’s you can’t do that.
And Hancock just finally had to say, don’t send me anything because if it, if you’re sending me something that is on this list, they’re gonna call me out for it because they did that.
In 17 69 Hancock gets publicly called out in a newspaper for being an importer.
And just that name alone was enough to raise the ire of, of the sons of Liberty because they have their own newspapers that were publishing names of importers.
Every, every issue on the front page would be the names of importers.

Jake:
[42:57] The paper in which Hancocks called out as the Boston Chronicle.
And he gets some pretty sweet revenge on the publisher of the Chronicle.

Brooke Barbier:
[43:05] Doesn’t he?

Jake:
[43:07] How does he end up getting back at this publisher?

Brooke Barbier:
[43:10] So John May, I believe that’s how you’d pronounce it. Mein. He’s from Scotland.
John Mayne is not afraid of confrontation and he publishes the Boston Chronicle and calls out Hancock consistently and he even publishes a list of his ship’s manifest, in the newspaper and Hancock has to defend himself.
He hates John Mayne at this point and unprompted, one of his partners in London writes to Hancock and says, hey, this guy John Mayne owes us money, might you know somebody who could help us out to collect.
And indeed Hancock does know somebody and it’s him.
So he has John Adams as his lawyer to take on John Mayne and eventually not too long afterwards, Boston Chronicle goes bankrupt.
Maine has to go back to London and then the the newspaper closes just shortly after that.

Jake:
[44:08] Sweet, sweet revenge.

Brooke Barbier:
[44:10] Yes, he gets it.

Jake:
[44:13] Hancock eventually kind of grudgingly reluctantly complies with all the, the different ways that the, the non importation agreements are enforced and he very much reduces the amount of, of importing as, that, which is, of course, the core of his business, the, the amount of importing that he does.
The massacre is another one of those moments that we see as the snowball rolling down the hill toward war.
You know, it’s one more stepping stone event on this sort of inevitable march toward war.
But at the time again, it was a sort of a, a moment to catch your breath because the town she acts are basically revoked.
Around that time, the British troops are withdrawn from Boston.
The tensions ratchet downward pretty far after that terrible night of violence.
How does somebody like John Hancock try to patch up the damage done to his business in the years before?

Brooke Barbier:
[45:13] He imports with Gusto. So of course, he’s not happy about the Boston massacre.
But I see the Boston massacre really as a period that 17 70 for Hancock at least begins a three year period, of normalcy and life before the Sugar Act was ever passed. Now.
Sure, there’s tensions. Samuel Adams is still trying to get people to be concerned about judges salaries and start a committee of correspondence.
So there’s still other things that some people are getting riled up about.
But for Hancock, it is a, it is a time to simply have fun, go on trips and resume his business. He wants to get back to it.

Hancock’s resumption of business and relative calm

 

[46:00] And you can see why that if, if you’ve sacrificed doing business for a year, you would be eager, eager to get back to it.
And there was some discussion in early 17 70 about whether the, the non importation agreement should continue or not.
And I think the Boston massacre in some ways breaks that fever where they say Hancock says I’m, I’m gonna go back to, to resuming people weren’t really, most people weren’t really on board with continuing it anyway.

Jake:
[46:31] Besides rebuilding his business, you say that he spent three years enjoying himself, traveling, entertaining and courting.
It sounds like how much do we know about John Hancock’s personal life, his love life before he met his future wife.

Brooke Barbier:
[46:53] Oh, so little so, so little, uh, he seemed to court this one woman for 10 years before he sent her a letter, a letter of dismissal or something.
Some, some similar language and a courtship lasting 10 years is not a, it was not the standard at the time.
That was certainly unusual.
And then in the early 17 seventies, he’s trying to find a wife and he looks overseas to London again.
Just a further proof that he, he considered marrying the daughter of one of his partners in London.
This isn’t, he doesn’t hate the British.
He isn’t wanting to never do business with them. He wants to marry someone who, who is born in London, or, you know, he considers it and then he ends up courting Dorothy Quincy and they court for quite some time before they eventually marry.
They, they court for four years before they eventually marry too.
Dorothy. She was also called Dolly. She later much later after Hancock dies says that she, you know, she all but says that she wasn’t that interested in Hancock.

[48:12] But you kind of get the sense that Hancock may not have been that interested in her either or, or at least not, not to the degree where he was so eager to get married because they wait so long.
If there’s some other reason they were waiting long, we don’t have those records.
They might exist somewhere, but we don’t, you know, they’re, they’re not, they don’t exist that we know of.

Jake:
[48:35] In this three year period of relative calm when Hancock’s focusing on business, on romance, on travel and general enjoyment.
As somebody in his station in life, he’s still expected to serve in government.
It sounds like. So he’s, I think still in the, the House of Representatives, maybe at this time, there appears to be, there’s some sort of falling out between him and the sort of Sam Adams radical group at that time.
What, what happened or how much of a sense could you get of what happened?

Brooke Barbier:
[49:11] The good that I get is that Hancock had had enough that he wanted to go back to importing Bri British.
He wanted to go back to resuming business and Samuel Adams wanted to continue the boycott even though he kind of knew that it had already, it had run its course and he was surprised that it had gone on as long as it did.
And Hancock just doesn’t want to be bothered with, with such things.
This is noticed by others too. So I don’t, I don’t think that there was a certain thing that happened beyond Hancock just saying, I’ve had not, not actually saying it, but thinking I’ve had enough and the Boston massacre and the troops getting sent out in 17 70 do kind of allow for this period of calm for him to step away.

[50:03] Samuel Adams tries to form the committee of correspondence in 17 72 and get Hancock on board and Hancock doesn’t get on board.
And both Samuel and John Adams are, are furious at this moderation that they don’t see this threat.
But you can just see that Hancock says I don’t care enough about what you are perceiving to be these threats against freedom and liberty.
When we look back today, it’s easy to identify Samuel Adams as this, as this visionary for continuing to see the, the tyranny.
But in fact, he was agitating when most people weren’t that worried about things.
And so if you read history backwards, yes, you can see Hancock as being this, this ardent revolutionary no matter what.
But if you read it actually from the present, Adams is kind of overstepping and being quite, quite aggressive when other people say, hey, we’re good here.
Most of the town and duties are repealed, the soldiers are gone.
We’re happy to be British subjects. Can we all en en enjoy things?
We don’t want people to be shot in the streets.
We don’t want these violent mobs.

Hancock’s Role in the Corps of Cadets

Jake:
[51:16] So along with his more official political role as a an office holder, one of the ways that Hancock sort of lives out the the obligation of somebody of his wealth is through a new role with the Corps of Cadets, which he had been a little bit active with uh earlier in life.
But in the 17 seventies, he steps into a, a leadership role of what, what was the purpose of the cadet corps in Boston.

Brooke Barbier:
[51:46] They were mostly a ce ceremonial militia group.
And Hancock gets selected elected as their colonel.
And this is the role for him, Jake because it’s ceremonial.
He wants nice uniforms. He now gets this title of colonel but also significantly, New England training days, militia training days usually ended in food and drink.
So this position gave him a chance to be generous and social.
And so this is a role he really jumps into in this period of calm and he turns around a group, they credit him with really making them prouder to be members of this group and to, to instill the townspeople in pride with pride rather.

Jake:
[52:32] And for what’s supposed to be a ceremonial guard for the governor on, you know, parade days and things like that.
He does actually get thrown into a few, I guess you’d call it a few moments of active duty when the cadets are supposed to turn out for the public good.
And one of those comes in 17 73 when Governor Hutchinson orders them to turn out and prevent disorder when these three t ships arrive in Boston Harbor. How’s that work out?

Brooke Barbier:
[53:05] Well, it’s sort of the same way it works out in 17 65 when Francis Bernard with the Stamp Act is like, ok, militia like gather around and it’s like, well, the militias comprised of people who are at least at a minimum sympathize with the mob, if not our members of the mob.
So Hancock says no way to Hutchinson. I’m not, I am not guarding the tea in the way you’d like.
Um instead I’m going to guard the tea the way that the sons of Liberty are talking about, which is to ensure that no one unloads the tea under the cover of night.
And so he and his cadets guard the T one night, which there was 20 a 20 day countdown between when the first ship arrives and when it needs to be unloaded.
And Hancock and his cadets were, were on duty to guard the T but had specifically told Hutchinson no.
So he was making it pretty clear who he, who he allied with.

Jake:
[54:01] Now, when the Rubber meets the road, he’s gonna caucus with the Sons of Liberty and sort of the, the Boston wigs.
But what was his relationship with t before that moment?

Brooke Barbier:
[54:12] He was an importer of it. And I think again, this is where he’s fortunate that his financial interests align with the intimidating political interests.
He had been importing tea during that period after the massacre.
After the not, well, we’ll just say after the non importation agreement.
And now with the Tea Act, you could only import tea if you were a designated tea consignee.
And he’s not no surprise there. And so that’s not great for his financial interests, but lucky for him, it aligns with these once again, very aggressive tactics by the sons of liberty to target the tt consignees.

Jake:
[54:54] And so one night in December, 17 73 some tea falls in the Harbor.

Hancock’s Support for the Tea Party, but not Participation

 

[55:01] What role did Hancock play that night?
Was he out there in red face with a few 100 of his best friends with a hatchet, cracking open tea chests?
Or what, what was he doing that night?

Brooke Barbier:
[55:14] He was that old South meeting house where Samuel Adams also was.
And where about Samuel Adams estimated that 5000 people gathered in this still surviving church today church building and he gave a speech that night.
And one participant, George Hughes remembers that when they, when everyone was exiting the church on their way to go dump the tea into the harbor that Hancock cried out.
Let every man do what is right in his own eyes.
So he was a supporter of the tea party, but he was not a participant.
He would be way too well known at this point in his life to go down and dump tea into the harbor.
Similarly, Samuel Adams Joseph Warren, these these men couldn’t participate and they hung back and, and Hancock gets pretty quiet after the tea party and says, oh, I don’t really even know what happened.
You know, when he writes to London about it.

Jake:
[56:11] Well, you’re right also that he, you think that he misunderstood the reaction of the tea party in a few ways?
What do you think he got wrong?

Brooke Barbier:
[56:22] Hancock thinks that the Tea Act is this big offensive act, but in fact, it’s the coercive acts that gets passed a year later in response to the Boston Tea Party that really unites, colonial Americans.
He thinks that it might be the tax, but in fact, it’s not, it’s the reaction to.
And so the coercive acts of 17 74 galvanized colonists against the British in a way that had not existed before because they seemed arbitrary and punitive and cruel.
In addition to highly unusual, they never, such laws hadn’t been passed before for the most part.
And so that’s what made people outside of Boston say.
Whoa, that’s an extreme measure to punish all of us in Massachusetts for the actions of 100 and 50 men.
But it’s also what made people in other colonies wake up and say this is actually pretty.
It’s an overstep by a lot and if this could happen to Boston, it could happen to us.

Jake:
[57:33] It sounds like it really also helped move the bubble for Hancock himself where just a few months later, he’s giving the Boston massacre oration.
So in just a few months time, he’s been pretty outspoken about the Tea Act.
He’s, you know, sort of publicly whipped up the crowd before the destruction of the tea.
And then he’s again, you know, fired up the crowd, I think again at Old South during the Boston massacre oration.
So he’s putting himself on a more sort of whish footing or more publicly wigged footing that he had in a while.

Brooke Barbier:
[58:09] And then then, right when you think, OK, this is where he is.

Jake:
[58:10] And then.

Hancock’s Mixed Stance in Massachusetts

Brooke Barbier:
[58:16] We finally got him. He’s, he’s on our side.
He as the core of cadets goes on to Andrew Oliver’s funeral and Samuel Adams says you shouldn’t be doing that.
And Hancock wants to honor the office, not necessarily the man.
And then the summer of 17 74 sees some really drastic action in Massachusetts. And Hancock sits it out.
Uh He doesn’t attend the first Continental Congress, he doesn’t attend the Suffolk County meetings in which the Suffolk resolves are created.
And again, this is where we can say if you look at history backward, you can see, oh, he missed it.
He wasn’t, he, he should have been there. He wasn’t permitted enough.
But if you’re looking at it from, from the, from his present, he sang the, these coercive acts are bad, but I, I don’t know that we wanna establish another government either.
So, so he’s in and then he’s out. Jake, he’s in and then he’s out.

Jake:
[59:21] Of all the sort of momentous preparations or momentous actions that are happening in 17 74.
The one he does finally take a role in is the provincial Congress sort of, I always refer to it as the uh the parallel shadow government, the revolutionary shadow government in Massachusetts.

Brooke Barbier:
[59:36] Yeah, I mean, really? Yeah, that’s a good way. Yeah.

Jake:
[59:40] So while he skips the first Continental Congress, he doesn’t help draft the Suffolk resolves, he is going to take office with this illegal assembly, this illegal uh legislature that’s being formed that in the spring of 17 75 meets in a little town called Concord.
And of course, while the congress, the legislature is meeting in Concord, it’s too far to commute for Hancock. So he’s staying in Lexington.
How does John Hancock experience? The Lexington alarm?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:00:11] There was some concern wrongly, but there was concern that Hancock and Adams were going, going to be kidnapped.
Samuel Adams is also staying at the same home and so there was a guard set up in front of the home.
And so there, there must have been some trepidation in the air that British soldiers might come and and see these two men.

[1:00:31] But when Revere arrives to warn them that the regulars are coming, Hancock takes out his sword and wants to and is talking about taking on the British.
So if there seems to be, at a, at least a moment of excitement or, or perhaps just adrenaline, and eventually Revere then tries to go on to conquer, you know, he has, he has a tough kind of road ahead um after getting to Lexington, but he returns, Revere returns back to Lexington a couple hours later.
And if stunned that Hancock and Adams are still there, so Hancock had had alarms conquered but, but Revere thought, get gone.
What are you still doing here?
And so the two of them eventually flee, but Hancock through his life wanted some sort of military experience.
Whether that’s he wanted it while sitting on a horse at the, you know, at the back, looking at what was happening, or whether he actually, you know, wanted to engage isn’t clear, it’s likely the former.
Um But he, he was disappointed that military action passed him by.

Jake:
[1:01:49] I thought it was interesting to read that the, the title of the book comes into play in Lexington that some of the militia are appropriating.
What’s been thrown around as an insult, King Hancock on the day of the battle.
How did they turn the, uh, the insult back on the British?

King Hancock: From Insult to Rallying Cry

Brooke Barbier:
[1:02:06] It’s one of my favorite things. Jake, the, in 17 74 we get an account of British officers asking of this captive Bostonian who organized the destruction of the tea.
And the man says nobody and the British officers say you’re a damned liar.
It was King Hancock and the damned sons of Liberty.
And this is the first time we see it being used in 17 74. This nickname and it captures so brilliantly Hancock’s popularity in the town, but it also serves as this backhanded compliment uh backhanded insult rather against the colonists that, oh this guy is your king, this is all that you can do.
And then in 75 when the British are retreating from Concord, quite desperately, they hear cries from the colonists calling out King Hancock forever.
And so they used the nickname that had been an insult and turned it into literally a rallying cry.
And that is so powerful to me.
Of course, the way that names can be and nicknames can be used and appropriated, but just it shows how powerful Hancock’s influence was not just in Boston, but in Massachusetts by 17 75.

Hancock’s decision to join the second Continental Congress

Jake:
[1:03:29] Almost as soon as the smoke clears from Lexington and Concord John Hancock is part of the party that’s off to Philly for the second Continental Congress.
How was he convinced to, to go after sitting the first one out?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:03:43] We don’t know why Hancock decided to go. It may be that his friend Thomas cushing a political moderate and also a delegate to the second Continental Congress may have encouraged him to go.
It could have been his ego that was upset for sitting out the first Continental Congress.
And it wouldn’t be for a lack of not being elected.
These delegates were elected and certainly Hancock would have been able to go if he’d wanted to.
So we don’t, we don’t have an answer from Hancock exactly as to why.
But it’s clear that he is on board and ready to serve in 17 75.

Jake:
[1:04:25] How does he end up after again, not even attending the First Continental Congress?
How does he end up becoming the president of the second Congress?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:04:33] Yeah. Just sort of dumb luck in that. Edmund Randolph was the president of the 1st and 2nd Continental Congress and Randolph gets called back to Virginia for business.
And so the presidency is open and the delegates seem to want to look to someone from the northern colonies because Randolph had been from Virginia and Hancock was seen as enough of a moderate in that he, first of all, he’s from Massachusetts.
And that’s a plus because that’s the like Virginia, that’s the other big state.
That’s, it has a lot of clout at this time.
But he’s a moderate within a very radical colony and he’s wealthy enough that other wealthy people feel that he might be able to identify with their interests too.
And he becomes president. And that is ultimately what leads him to sign the Declaration of Independence first and immortalizes his, his name and his signature.

Jake:
[1:05:28] That’s funny because he was looking for a different type of immortality and really a different job in the revolutionary war years.
He was looking for the job. Maybe that George Washington eventually got.
How close did he get to that?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:05:42] I don’t think close at all. John Adams wrote that Hancock wanted the position of general and that he was so disappointed when he didn’t get it.
And like some things with most things with John Adams, I just don’t you have to read it his accounts with a grain of salt because he’s writing this years after the effect when Washington had become this success.

Jake:
[1:06:04] You have to read anything that John Adams writes through the lens of his intense jealousy of all other people.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:06:10] Of all other people. Yes, and his own superiority and yet insecurity at the exact same time.
So Hancock, I don’t ii, I certainly think Hancock would have wanted the role.
As I mentioned, he wants that military experience, but he didn’t, wouldn’t have wanted the role to actually be the general.
That, that that really wouldn’t make any sense for him.
So I don’t think he came close at all. And in fact, when Washington was chosen, he was chosen for a reason because he was from Virginia.
So similarly, Hancock got the position as president because he’s from Massachusetts.
Washington got the position because he was from Virginia.
They didn’t want to nominate someone from New England to run an army of New Englanders because that would open the colonies up to being attacked by New England or run by New England.
And so George Washington assuage those concerns because he’s from Virginia and so he could go command New Englanders.
And so then, you know, it was Washington who, who became General Hancock. Not ever close.

Jake:
[1:07:24] Along with his duties in Philadelphia in 17 75.

Hancock’s pursuit of marriage during the conflict

 

[1:07:28] It seems like this is the, the time when John Hancock gets really serious about, ok, it’s time to lock down a wife.
I need to get married. Who knows what’s going to happen next in, in this conflict?
What were his letters to Dolly? Like um in the months before they, they got married in 17 75.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:07:48] He is sending gifts and he wants letters in return and he wants her attention and of her affection and she’s really not giving it.
And at one point she’s in Connecticut and flirting with Aaron Burr, the Aaron Burr and Hancock’s aunt is pretty panicked about this.
And so when there’s a break in the legislative session, Hancock heads down to Connecticut and marries Dolly.
And it’s sort of peculiar because Hancock is looking for connection throughout his life.
And so to get married so late meant that he was probably he, he may have been finding connection elsewhere or he had the fellowship of friends.
But once he gets married, he seems to really like being married.
And so it’s, it’s so interesting as to why he waited so long because once he has a wife, he’s really glad for her company.

Jake:
[1:08:47] I get the sense that there was an imbalance in their relationship, that he was more desperate for her.
I don’t know, fellowship or her companionship than she was for his.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:08:58] Yes. It’s obvious in the letters that, that he, he says it’s not that let Dolly’s letters don’t survive.
And so we don’t know what they say. It’s that she wasn’t writing to him.
And we know that because Hancock says, please write me back.
I’ve written three letters and haven’t gotten anything from you in return when tragic events happen in their life.
She doesn’t lean on Hancock in the same way.
She certainly wasn’t as interested in him as he was in her.
I don’t think she found the same comfort from him as a husband as he did in her as a wife.

Jake:
[1:09:33] Funny, you know, Abigail Adams wrote to John during that period, not every day but pretty close.
And he was still always desperate for more letters and still chiding her for not writing enough.
And one of the things that he always puts in those letters is how much he wishes that she’d come to Philadelphia and keep him company during the second Continental Congress.
And John Hancock got to live that dream.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:09:57] Yes. He was the only delegate for a while who had a wife there.
And you can tell he really is, is grateful for it. And John Adams is jealous of it.
Of course he is. But John Adams is jealous of it and she dolly doesn’t enjoy her time there.
She doesn’t want to be amongst all of these delegates helping Hancock with some of his presidential duties.
It, it’s pretty easy to imagine why, why that wouldn’t interest a woman.

Jake:
[1:10:24] Well, it seems like a huge job for her because she in a way become, becomes the hostess of Philadelphia.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:10:32] Yeah. And she has to like she’s doing some of the more mundane aspects of his presidency, but then her husband is also gone for long stretches, working and then returning home and with lots to share and she has less to share.
Um She doesn’t have as many friends there. She isn’t able to entertain in the same way.
Life is just not great for her there.

Jake:
[1:10:55] If we know anything about the Second Continental Congress, it’s that they declared independence.

Hancock’s perspective on the debate for independence

 

[1:11:01] And that’s another one of those things that seems like a foregone conclusion in retrospect.
But by no means is, and you know, listeners who are interested can follow that debate and everything from the John Adams mini series to the 17 76 musical to serious scholarly works that have been published for years and years.
But what did that debate look like from Hancock’s perspective?
He seems like he was reluctant to even consider independence almost right up until the moment that he signed the act declaring it.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:11:36] He has so much more to lose Jake than Samuel Adams or John Adams who are really agitating in Massachusetts, or excuse me in Philadelphia for the Massachusetts delegates and all of the delegates to support independence.
And John Adams talks about how Samuel is quite publicly annoyed with Hancock for not supporting independence.
And in fact, the Adams peasants scheme to have Thomas cushing a moderate voted out of the Continental Congress and replaced with someone who was more inclined towards independence.
And Hancock sees this for what it is. He sees the machinations, but he, he has more to lose.
And there’s plenty of moderates in Congress who he can identify with and he finds friends outside of Massachusetts who uh are are less inclined to, to sever ties with the British Empire.
And of course, again, if we read history backwards, you would see, well, of course, the United States goes on to be prosperous and that was the right call and we didn’t need to be under the British Empire’s thumb.
But if you’re in it, there’s no assurance that, that you’d win a war against the British Empire, there’s no assurance that you’d be able to survive as a country and thrive as a country.
And so Hancock is uncertain as, as other delegates are.

Jake:
[1:13:06] And yet it seems like his attitude shifts almost the moment he puts that famous signature on the famous piece of parchment.
How do you think he squared that circle or how do you think he changed his tune so suddenly?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:13:19] I don’t actually get a full read on why.
I think once he decided that we declared independence, he sends it out to the colonies for distribution and to George Washington to read to the army.
And then he’s in, he says, OK, I’m in, he’s one of the delegates who mentions Thomas Payne’s common sense as well.
He sent it to a friend for their amusement. So I’m not sure that he fully bought into Payne’s ideas, but, he was well aware that the pamphlet Common Sense was also floating around as well.
So I think there was a lot of different external factors that determined that for him.

Personal Stresses and Hancock’s Decision to Step Down

Jake:
[1:14:05] The declaration and the debate around independence weren’t the only business on the table for John Hancock that summer.
Just as the debate around independence was ramping up, his Aunt Lydia passes away and she’s at the time still the official owner of a lot of the Hancock fortune.
The house, basically everything except the business.
How did Hancock’s life change when Lydia died?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:14:29] He inherits all of it, which also means the enslaved men and women that had been bequeathed to Lydia.
She passes on to Hancock and the freedom is provisional.
Some of them are freed outright in her will emancipated outright.
And then others are have this provisional freedom that you will be free in a year if you comply with Hancock’s wishes.
So that changes for him too. But if we go back to what we talked about at the beginning, this is also had been a, a parental figure to him and she’s now gone.
So he doesn’t have any another adult parent figure in his life when Lydia is gone.
And so that that would have been difficult for him too. I imagine.

Jake:
[1:15:17] How much do you think personal stresses like that?
And the unhappiness that dolly felt in Philadelphia contributed to his decision to step down as the president of Congress by the end of 17 77.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:15:30] His health is so dependent on the stressors in his life.
It’s clear during times of acute stress that his health fails him.
It also doesn’t help that he rides in a carriage and doesn’t necessarily walk a lot and that he drinks a lot of madea and food and suffers from gout.
So the gout that he, that inflicts him is, is very painful for him and can lay him down for some time.
But it’s also very apparent that the, that the stresses in his life make it difficult for him to serve effectively at this stage.

Jake:
[1:16:14] Did he leave unfinished business behind in Congress when he stepped down?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:16:18] Only the articles of Confederation. Jake. I mean, he had been working on those.
He called them. I think, I, I forget, but I think he called them my articles.
Um, and then they don’t get past for years anyway, but he’s ready to step down and he ends up being the longest serving president of the Continental Congress.
And it certainly says something about his commitment to it and, and likely his perseverance during times when he wanted to stop.
But then he enough is enough and he needs to go home and he’s not unusual in that way, the second Continental Congress would be plagued with poor attendance for, throughout its existence.
So, yeah, he’s, he’s ready to go home.

Jake:
[1:17:00] Well, he goes back to Boston. He’s in Boston just barely long enough to welcome the next John Hancock into the world.
And he goes back to Congress, comes back to Boston again pretty quickly thereafter.
And then finally he gets his long time wish fulfilled. He gets to be in command of troops.

Hancock’s Eager Involvement in the Military and Home Front

 

[1:17:21] How does that go? What’s his role in uh the battle of Newport or the battle of Rhode Island?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:17:28] WW. He, he really just doesn’t, there’s a hurricane that blows through and boy is he eager, he’s riding through the camps on his horse and checking on the tents and he’s so excited.
He writes to Dolly, he writes to George Washington about the adventures he’s finally having.
But he, there’s never actually a battle that he takes part in.
And what I write is, and that’s the last of it for him.
Once this opportunity passes him by, he, he doesn’t, he doesn’t get it again to serve in the military, but he’s, he’s more helpful on the home front than on the battlefront.

Jake:
[1:18:04] Well, yeah, talk about how he uses his love of entertaining on the home front to enforce, reinforce the Franco American alliance that seemed on the brink of falling apart after the battle of Newport.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:18:17] The Comte De Sting is the French admiral and he pulls out of Newport because he wants to go back to Boston to repair his ships after the hurricane damage.
And people in New England felt abandoned quite rightly by the French Navy because so many men had gathered to take on the British in Newport.
But there’s also this underlying problem of the British had been fighting against the French just the decade before.
And so she suddenly now be the allies.

Jake:
[1:18:47] For most of the century before that.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:18:48] Exactly. Exactly. And so to now suddenly be the allies of this nation that you don’t fully trust also, you don’t trust them because they’re most inhabitants are Catholic.
This is mostly a protestant colony. So there’s all these reasons to distrust the French.
And then Hancock steps in and is really one of the only men who you could picture doing this.
He is as close to an aristocrat as you’re gonna get.
And the French officers are real aristocrats and so they’re coming, expecting the fine entertainment, the fine food and drink that really Hancock and few others could provide.
Hancock is savvy enough to compartmentalize any distrust he has of the French.
And throughout their month long stay, he entertains the French in taverns in his home.
He ends up hosting a large fall and this is so critical to also modeling for Bostonians, the behavior that they should take with the French because Bostonians are, are so distrustful.
But if Hancock, the popular man is ok with them, then that sort of let them know that they could be OK with the French too.

Jake:
[1:20:07] We say that John Hancock entertained them but really the the work falls not on John Hancock, but on Dolly and the household staff.
What does it mean for them to all of a sudden have these huge balls and dinners and other events to host at the Beacon Hill Mansion?

Scrambling to feed unexpected guests at the Hancock mansion

Brooke Barbier:
[1:20:27] It means scrambling because for example, Hancock had invited the com to stand for a breakfast with 30 officers he was expecting.
And he looks down Beacon Hill and sees 100 and 50 men coming up the hill and it’s not that long of a walk to prepare 100 and 20 additional meals.
So Dolly runs around to the neighbors to, to gather any cake that they that might be had the servants go down to Boston Common and, and milk at these communal cows.
And this is also during a time of food shortages, some people were struggling to have basic food.
And so the French officers put Hancock and his servants in a difficult position, time and time again with how many days and nights they’d spend at the Hancock mansion.
But it’s also, it’s worth noting that it showed Hancock’s privilege that he was able to entertain in this way because other people didn’t have.

Jake:
[1:21:25] Yeah, there was a series of bread riots throughout the revolution in, in Boston at different times where people were literally breaking into warehouses to get loaves of bread.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:21:34] Right. Thomas Hancock had prided himself on having these great orchards in his house and those were picked clean by the French officers too.
So um they, they took what they wanted from the Hancocks.

Jake:
[1:21:48] Well, I I want to fast forward just a little bit to October 25th, 17 80.
There’s a moment when John Hancock steps out onto the same balcony on the second floor of the old statehouse where four years earlier, the declaration of Independence was first read and proclaimed and he is waving to the crowd below as the first elected governor under our new state constitution.
And one thing I really like throughout the book is how often you return to John Hancock’s embrace of fashion to tell us more about John Han Hancock, the man.
So what did he choose to wear when he reveals himself as the first elected governor in Massachusetts?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:22:31] The quote says a suit of Crimson velvet or it might even say a plain suit of crimson velvet.
And the old statehouse believes that the jacket they have in their collection is this jacket owned by John Hancock.
So if viewers have ever gone to the old statehouse, it’s a replica on display now.
But for years, it was the original and they believe that that’s the one and this is the time when we don’t see gilded embroidery, he likely had a gilded ve um, waistcoat on underneath a long vest.
The idea seems to be that he wanted to look of the people that day and for once and by the way, Crimson Velvet isn’t exactly of the people.

Jake:
[1:23:17] It’s not exactly buckskin or homespun. Right.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:23:19] Yeah, he, yeah, exactly. But um, that was, that was um unusual for him to not have that gilded gilded clothing and he’s, he’s certainly so fine of dress in other instances too.

Increasing division in Massachusetts during Hancock’s first term

 

[1:23:33] But this was a way that he was, he was projecting himself as the, you know, not a royal governor, but the People’s governor.

Jake:
[1:23:41] Tell me about that first term, or, I guess the first five years that he serves as governor, it seems like it’s a time of increasing division in Massachusetts, a time when he made very liberal use of sort of the 18th century equivalent of the pocket veto.
What were the main affairs of state for the state of Massachusetts at the time?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:24:04] The war was still going on for three years. You know, the Treaty of Paris isn’t signed until 17 83 there’s a, there’s a war going on, but also it’s paying for the war and that’s where you start to see Hancock’s constituents really feel the pain because.

[1:24:22] The legislature wants to pass these taxes to pay down the state’s debt.
And handcuff really doesn’t want, doesn’t want to approve these taxes and he plays these ridiculous little games so that he’s not the one approving of the tax, but he didn’t disapprove of it either.
I would say the financial interests of the state are his predominant concern or lack of concern because he, he kind of has a shut his eyes approach to it.
He’s also in financial trouble. He is recalling back old debts.
He hi, he hires someone to, to call back old debts and he owes money himself.
He sees how people are suffering, he hears from how people are suffering.
And he eventually, before the end of his term resigns as governor.
I don’t know if he’s foreseeing big problems ahead, which certainly happen or if that’s just again reading history backwards or if he just needed a break.
But to resign before the end of your term certainly suggests that he was either feeling so unwell at the time, which we know he, he was unwell throughout those years and simply couldn’t take the responsibility anymore.

Jake:
[1:25:38] One of the big drivers of the financial crisis at the time was the fact that government debts had to be repaid in hard currency and gold and silver.
But what was mostly circulating at the time was paper money that was going through this rampant hyperinflation.
So, you know, people’s money, especially wartime bonds was basically worthless.
So why did John Hancock accept what he knew was basically worthless paper currency for repayment of his own personal debts for people who owed him money?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:26:13] I think that we see sympathy there.
He, he understood the problems that the people of Massachusetts were facing.
Now, if you were cynical and or potentially right, a cynic might have said.
And in fact, at least one did that. He was doing it to garner votes.
But jake, the reality is that he didn’t need more votes as governor, he was winning by landslide.
So as long as Hancock wanted to be governor, he would be governor.
So I think he did it truly, he had money to spare and wanted to be a good leader, a good governor.
And so he accepted this worthless paper currency.

Jake:
[1:26:56] Did that have any impact on his personal fortune? Did he feel it in his pocketbook?

Impact of accepting paper currency on Hancock’s personal fortune

Brooke Barbier:
[1:27:01] He dies with less money than he inherits.
And that makes sense for a man who was a merchant during the American revolution.
Most merchants didn’t make money and he didn’t, as I mentioned, didn’t necessarily have the savvy the way that other merchants did to really tap into privateer or other ways to, to make fortunes because certainly some men made fortunes in the American revolution. It just wasn’t Hancock.

Jake:
[1:27:30] He also never stopped spending. He was a man who liked fine things.
He liked to shop. He liked great fashion. And in this gap year or this gap period.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:27:37] Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Jake:
[1:27:41] After leaving office and declining re-election to, to Congress, one of the ways he finds to spend a chunk of his fortune is redecorating the mansion on Beacon Hill.
And I really like this description because you, you could find a lot of detail about furniture, carpets, drapes, dishes.
I want to know how he decorated his mansion. But also how did you learn how he decorated his mansion?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:28:07] He is placing orders to London. London.
Mind you, let’s just think about that for a second that there’s a, they just waged war against England and yet he still wants to his provisions and his home outfitted in the London style.
He wanted the Drake to match the sofas.
It seemed like quite a lot of fabric inside this living room that he was redecorating.
He also wanted new carpets because he said the British officers who occupied his home had ruined them.
He also, we don’t know when, but at some point in this period, he adds on a one story room to the mansion that served as either a large dining hall or a ballroom, which again is perfect for a man who loves to entertain.

Jake:
[1:28:58] One interesting detail in the book is, that Hancock came to really strongly prefer dining on pewter over China to the point where it’s such a strong preference that at one point he has a household servant, smash a piece of fine China to make a point.
How did he end up with such a strong preference for pewter plates?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:29:22] He felt so sick later in his life.
We hear it from Hancock, but we hear it from others too that he was so unwell at times with bouts of gout, things were so painful.
He became sensitive to noise. He sometimes couldn’t pick up a pen.
Um a quill in his hands, he needs peace and quiet in his house and the clanging of China was going to make too much noise for him.
And so yeah, he ordered that they couldn’t serve China anymore.

Jake:
[1:29:51] I love it. It had to be a shocking moment for uh and Cato by this point, if memory serves is no longer enslaved by Hancock. How, how did that come about?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:30:05] That’s right. We don’t know when everyone is freed, but definitely by the 17 seventies, Hancock has emancipated any remaining enslaved men and women to him.
We know that Cato goes on to work as a paid servant in Hancock’s home even after being, being freed. And I write this.
And it’s important to note that it’s not as if there was a thriving job market for black men in Boston at the time owing to prejudice.
And so it may have been out of loyalty to Hancock or it may have been that that was a man he had known and at least potentially felt like, ok, this is better than somebody I don’t know.

Cato’s freedom and loyalty to Hancock

Jake:
[1:30:52] We had talked about him kind of taking a break after resigning from the governorship.
And again, as seems to be the case so often with them, man, was that lucky timing?
Will you remind listeners what Xi’s rebellion was and, and what some of the issues that led up to it were?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:31:13] Farmers in western Massachusetts were in debt and you could be thrown in debtor’s prison at the time and they were in debt because they weren’t paying these onerous taxes because they had this worthless paper currency that we’re talking about.
Many of these farmers also were veterans of the revolutionary war.
They had fought in the revolutionary war but had redeemed, they had traded their payment voucher given it to a speculator in exchange for a lower percentage of the value.

[1:31:45] So you have these farmers who had just fought in a war now being paid with taxes that they can’t afford, not being paid by the government for their military service.
They were petitioning the legislature for help and not getting it.
So finally, they took it into their own hands and they closed down courts in Massachusetts forcibly so that people couldn’t go to debtor’s prison.
This became known as Shay’s rebellion and it spans over months and it’s named after Daniel Shades who wasn’t really even a leader, but it was a series of rebellions against the courts in western Massachusetts.
Governor James Bowden has an outsized reaction to Shay’s rebellion and he calls forth a private militia to, to, to suppress this rebellion.
And he also limits constitutional rights for, for these rioters.
And many in Massachusetts see this as such an extreme reaction to people that they kind of sympathized with, if not outright sympathized with.

Jake:
[1:32:55] And it just so happens that James Bowden Hancock’s biggest political opponent, is in charge at this time and Hancock is a private citizen.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:33:04] That’s right. And Bowden when he’s raising funds, Hancock does not contribute.
You get a lot of prominent men contributing to that militia, but Hancock is not one of them.
And then Bowden gets voted out and Hancock gets voted back into office because people in Massachusetts didn’t really have an appetite for suppressing people that they felt were rebelling against taxes.
This was what had been happening the decade and two before.
And so Hancock really shows how much he understands people when he’s elected.
He pardons almost all of the rebels, many of whom were sentenced to die, and he takes a lower salary as a governor to help the government recoup its costs.
He brings a piece and he said, let’s not think that these rebels, are against meaningful government or against government like let’s not all cast them as people who can’t live peaceably within a government.
And so he really brings a calm that even his critics have to acknowledge only Hancock could do.
I mean, this is really something that, that only someone with like the clout of Hancock and the political moderation could pull off.

Hancock’s moderation in pardoning rebels and supporting the government

Jake:
[1:34:23] That seems to be one of Hancock’s master strokes of moderation.
And it’s followed by another truly masterful moment of moderation.
When Hancock, I don’t know if leading is the right word.
But when he appears at the ratifying convention for Massachusetts to vote on whether to ratify the US Constitution, as somebody who through his whole life was so concerned with fashion and maintaining appearances and always looking his best, his appearance at the ratifying convention must have been shocking.
What did he wear that day? And, and how did he enter the hall or the, the church where the convention was held?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:35:07] It would have been devastating for him because he was wrapped in flannels.
He was so unwell that he had been sitting out the convention now a thick might say and certainly did that.
He was waiting, he was sitting out the conference and he was feeling, saying that he was feeling sick because he didn’t want to take a hard stand.
He does eventually show up at the convention wrapped in flannels and he’s hurried in by two of his servants.
And that was not uncommon at this time in his life to have to be carried, unable to walk on his own.
So the clothes help tell his story that he’s not feeling well and this is how unwell I’m feeling, but he says, essentially, I couldn’t sit this one out.
I have to come to the ratifying convention.

Jake:
[1:35:58] And after maybe sitting back long enough to see which way the winds were going to blow.
What position does he end up taking in the end? What does he say Massachusetts should do? Or that the new country should do?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:36:10] He says that Massachusetts should ratify, but he does something unusual that no state that had yet to ratify, had done, which is he proposed amendments, these amendments, not the ones that Hancock proposes necessarily eventually become the Bill of Rights.
But James Madison winnows down over 100 proposals to the bill of rights to become the 10 that we know, but no state had yet proposed these amendments and every state after Massachusetts that ratified proposed amendments, because originally the constitutional convention said you either take it or you leave it, you, you can’t make any changes.
But Massachusetts was such an important state and Hancock was such an important vote that they said to him, federalists, those that were supporting the constitution said you can go in there and, support the constitution and then make, propose some amendments and that’s what he does.
And this shows the limit of Hancock’s power. And it also shows how contentious it was, how divisive the issue of ratifying the US constitution was because it passes by 19 votes out of 500 votes.
So it is still close. So even though Hancock probably brought people on board, he didn’t sway everyone to his side.

Hancock’s popularity as governor and one miscalculation during Washington’s visit

Jake:
[1:37:29] It seems like Hancock had some ambitions to be president.
But while that didn’t come to fruition, he was popular enough to serve as governor.
He was re elected as governor every year for the rest of his life.
The last few years of King Hancock’s reign seem to be the easiest of his political career.
With one exception, one big miscalculation that he made.
Will you tell listeners a little bit about the battle of Wills that takes place during George Washington’s presidential visit to the Commonwealth in 17 89.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:38:05] George Washington is elected president, John Adams is elected the vice president and Hancock is governor of Massachusetts.
And Washington wants to go on a goodwill tour of all 13 United States introducing himself as the president, letting people see him throwing him parades.
And Ma Boston does that. They throw him a big parade. They have this large event.
And Hancock had asked Washington if on the day he wanted to arrive that he wanted to dine at Hancock’s mansion which Washington accepted. They’d known each other for years.
And Hancock is not at the parade.
This welcome parade for Washington and Washington fight writing in his diary about all of the attention he received and the appreciation from the people of Boston.
He was mad because one person wasn’t there and that was John Hancock.
And so he wrote to Hancock saying I’m not going to dine at your home.
And Hancock writes back and says, oh, I’m very sick of, of course, that’s why I wasn’t there, but you can still come over and these two write these letters back and forth.
Washington saying I’m not gonna call on you first. You need to call on me Hancock saying I’m sick.
I, I would still welcome you. Samuel Adams is sort of acting as a go between, by the way, they’re staying mere blocks from each other.
Um And eventually Hancock realizes that he’s.

[1:39:34] As you said, a match of the wills and he’s been outmatched and he needs to call on Washington first and he does and then Washington the following day goes to Hancock’s Mansion.
And so this kind of seems as just this bickering between these two men about who’s going to visit first.

Jake:
[1:39:53] Two old rich guys who’s richer, who’s more important.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:39:57] Exactly. But there is something else going on here.
And I think this is what makes this story so illuminating for this new nation is that Hancock was the governor of Massachusetts a sovereign state, and this new federal government was uncertain.
It had just passed, Washington had been president for very long.
And while we as Americans today accept that the president is the highest political office in the land that wasn’t, that hadn’t been established.
There had been no precedent for that any time prior.
So Hancock was playing out what other people were feeling, which is what is, what is the role of this central government because Washington was the head of this new central national government that some states were uncertain about.
And so Hancock, I see him as defending Massachusetts and I see Washington asserting himself saying this new federal government is going to be more powerful than the states.
I I actually oversee you even when I’m coming into Massachusetts, you must call on me first.

Hancock’s Declining Health and Legacy

Jake:
[1:41:10] Hancock’s health continues to get worse after that.
You know, he’s able to use it as an excuse for why he didn’t want to be the first to pay a visit to Washington.
But he is very sick and his health continues to decline until he finally, well, how does he finally meet his end? At just 56 years old?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:41:29] He dies in the afternoon. We don’t really know from what, but a doctor, it’s clear he’s not doing well.
Then he makes a brief recovery and then a couple of days later, he’s doing unwell again and then he, he dies, he dies without a will.
He dies while in office.

Jake:
[1:41:49] Your book paints this portrait of this fascinating man of contradictions.
You have the one of the wealthiest men of the colonies, who’s a man of the people.
We have a merchant who made his fortune in the warm embrace of the empire, who puts his name on the top and, and largest on the, the declaration of independence and in slavery, who calls for freedom, and a moderate in this town of radicals.
Why do you think John Hancock’s legacy was forgotten so quickly after his death?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:42:22] Hancock late in his life had critics who accused him of being shallow and vain and frivolous.
And that stuck many historians latched on to that in the 18 twenties.
You see Hancock actually get quite a lot of do when the first copies of the signed Declaration of Independence are made public.
And he’s really praised in that era. But, but much of the much of the writings about him rely on some of these critics later in his life who who echoed that same sentiment.
He died without heirs to maybe write a counter story, you know, a counter narrative.
He died without a lot of records, the way that some other men whose letters it survive in bulk.
I think it, it became an easy way to talk about Hancock as this one dimensional person.
Despite him achieving a level of popularity in Massachusetts, that was unrivaled.
It was just a way for people to I I think explain away a man they didn’t quite understand.

Jake:
[1:43:37] Well, if our listeners want to understand more about John Hancock, we will, of course, in the show notes this week have a link to purchase the book King Hancock, the radical influence of a moderate founding Father Brooke.
If people want to find out more about you or follow your work online, where should they look for that?

Brooke Barbier:
[1:43:56] First. They should come on a tour if you live in Boston, join us at yield tavern tours to see some historic sites to have some beers and historic taverns and to hear all about the revolutionary and drunken history of Boston.
So that’s at yield tavern tourists dot com. And then you could also go to my personal website to find out.
I’ve got a lot of events coming up for King Hancock book talks and signings and I’d love to see listeners there as well.
And so that’s Brooke hyphen barbier dot com.

Jake:
[1:44:28] Brooke Barbier. I just want to say thank you so much for being very generous with your time this evening.
I’m just looking at the clock and realizing how far over my original estimate we went and thank you so much for the book and for informing our listeners today.

Brooke Barbier:
[1:44:45] Jake, I loved chatting with you. You have such great questions and such great insight.
And so it was a, it was a lot of fun to talk about Hammock with someone as knowledgeable as you.
And, um I thank the listeners in advance for listening.

Jake:
[1:44:58] Well, that’s about all for this week to learn more about Brooke Barbier in her book, King Hancock.
Check out this week’s show notes at hubor dot com slash 286.
We’ll have a link to Brooke author website where you can find more information about upcoming book events in the Boston area.
A link to yield tavern tours where you can book a Boston tour with brooke herself and of course, a link where you can support the show and independent booksellers by buying her book.
I’ll also be sure to link to Brooke’s interview with Nicky and me way back in episode 22 as well as a sample of Hancock’s famous signature from a thank you note that he wrote in 17 65.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubor dot com.
We’re Hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and still most active on Twitter. For now.
If you’re on Mastodon, you can find me as at Hubor at better dot Boston or just go to Hubor dot com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.
If you do drop me a line and I’ll send you a hub history sticker as a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[1:46:24] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.