In King Hancock, the Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father, Brooke Barbier 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 enslaver who called for freedom. Perhaps most of all, heās portrayed as a moderate in a town of radicals.Ā Hancock didnāt leave behind the same carefully preserved, indexed, and cross referenced lifetime of papers like our old friend John Adams.Ā He wasnāt immortalized as the indispensable man, like George Washington.Ā But Brooke weaves together the details that can 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 a famous signature.
Tag: John Hancock
The Persuasive Powers of John Adams (episode 272)
John Adams later described the prosecution of William Corbet as a case āof an extraordinary Character, in which I was engaged and which cost me no small Portion of Anxiety.āĀ In 1769, four common sailors were brought into Boston to stand trial for murder.Ā The victim was an officer in the royal navy, and the crime had taken place just off Cape Ann, almost within sight of home.Ā As Boston suffered under military occupation, could a military victim receive justice in a radicalized Boston?Ā And what really happened on that ship near Marblehead?Ā Had the dead officer really just been searching for cargo that the captain hadnāt declared and paid customs on?Ā Or were they up to something darker, like illegally kidnapping Massachusetts sailors and forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy?
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Hostibus Primo Fugatis: The Washington Before Boston Medal (episode 253)
Back in 2015, I was at the Boston Public Library for a special exhibition called āWe Are One,ā which showcased items from their collection dating from the French and Indian War to the Constitutional Convention, showing how thirteen fractious colonies forged a single national identity.Ā Libraries have a lot more than just books, of course.Ā The BPL has everything from streaming movies and music to historic maps to medieval manuscripts to Leslie Jonesā photos to one remarkable gold medal.Ā Some of the items on display were breathtaking, like a map hand drawn by George Washington, Paul Revereās hand drawn diagram showing where the bodies fell during the Boston Massacre, and a gorgeous 360 degree panorama showing the view from the top of Beacon Hill during the siege of Boston.Ā What stopped me in my tracks, though, was a solid gold medal.Ā It was about three inches in diameter, but it was hard to tell through the thick and probably bulletproof glass protecting it.Ā
On the side facing me, I could see a bust of George Washington and some words, but they were too small to read.Ā A special bracket held the medal in front of a mirror, and on the back I could make out more lettering, as well as a cannon and a group of men on horses.Ā Later, I learned that this was the Washington Before Boston Medal, commemorating the British evacuation of Boston.Ā It was the first Congressional gold medal, and the first medal of any kind commissioned by the Continental Congress during our Revolutionary War.Ā This illustrious medalās journey to the stacks of the Boston Public Library will take us from Henry Knoxās cannons at Dorchester Heights to John Adams at the Second Continental congress in Philly to Ben Franklin in Paris to a Confederateās dank basement in West Virginia during the Civil War.Ā Ā
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The Middlesex Canal: Boston’s First Big Dig (episode 225)
In the last decade of the 18th century, a group of investors called the Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal turned a crazy idea into reality.Ā After some initial stumbles, they were able to successfully build a navigational canal from Boston Harbor to the Merrimack River in Lowell.Ā In an era before highways and airports, it became the first practical freight link between the markets and wharves of Boston and the vast interior of New England in Central Massachusetts and New Hampshire.Ā Against all odds, it was a success, and an unparalleled feat of engineering.Ā However, its perceived success was short lived, with the coming of the railroad spelling doom for the canal business and commercial failure for the Proprietors.
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The Liberty Riot (episode 224)
On June 10, 1768 a riot swept through Boston that forced Royal officials to flee for their lives, saw a boat bodily carried onto the Common and burned, and in the end helped bring on the Boston Massacre less than two years later.Ā John Hancock, later a prominent patriot and owner of Americaās most famous signature, was at the center of the controversy.Ā Known then as a leading merchant and possibly the richest man in the British colonies, Hancock would find himself on trial as a smuggler before a court that was originally set up to deal with pirates and defended by none other than future President John Adams.
The Grand Derangement (episode 197)
One morning in August, redcoats fanned out across the province, taking entire families into custody, burning farms and crops, and killing livestock.Ā Falling in the middle of two centuries of intermittent warfare, this grand derangement, or great upheaval, didnāt take place in Boston or even in Massachusetts.Ā But Boston bore responsibility for the acts carried out in its name, and Boston would host the āFrench Neutrals,ā the human byproducts of the purge that we remember as the expulsion of the Acadians who were confined in our city for nearly a decade.