American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  But despite Hancock’s very public celebration of his new role, his acceptance of the commission was not the coup Hutchinson had hoped for. Hancock was not switching loyalty; in fact, he considered the offer to lead the cadets to have come from the officers themselves, as it had been instigated by a unanimous vote of the men who served in the Cadet Corps.

  As Sam Adams noted, “a reluctance at the idea of giving offense to an hundred gentlemen” led Hancock to accept the commission.2 It was his sense of duty to his fellow citizens that pushed Hancock to accept the role offered by Hutchinson—and his loyalty, while ignored by Hutchinson, was noted by the Sons of Liberty.

  The duty that Hancock felt toward his fellow colonists had long been understood by Sam Adams and the other Sons, and not only in the realm of politics. As trade eased with England after the Townshend Acts were rescinded and Hancock’s warehouses began to fill with goods, owners of small village stores streamed into Boston to replenish their own stocks. With little money to offer and no track records in business, there were few merchants who would sell to these aspiring business owners. But John Hancock extended credit to those who expressed to him their sincere desire to work hard and shared with him their dreams of fortunes to be made.

  Hancock didn’t help only the small shop owners; he also sought, in his role as a merchant leader of Boston, to help other warehouse operators get their businesses up and running again. The important thing, Hancock reasoned, was to build a strong colonial business class, one that could speak in a united voice, when necessary, against the machinations of English politicians and suppliers. Trade was hard for everyone, with a surplus of goods flooding the market. The House of Hancock, even as it extended credit to others, found itself falling into debt with its suppliers in England. Hancock himself was never in danger of insolvency—with his vast real estate holdings in Boston and throughout New England and other investments, he was rich as Croesus—and he persevered, through good times and bad, in securing unity among colonial businessmen from the lowest shopkeepers to the largest importers.

  In May 1771, when John Hancock was elected, with Sam Adams as his running mate, to once again lead the Boston representatives to the General Court, Hutchinson suddenly understood: Hancock was not his man and never had been. And when with great fanfare Hancock commissioned John Singleton Copley to paint a portrait of Sam Adams, and then hung it proudly in the drawing room of his mansion beside his own Copley portrait, Hutchinson knew he had lost Hancock for good. Hancock was no Royalist, no Loyalist, never had been and never would be.

  The Copley portrait of Sam Adams clearly demonstrated where Hancock’s loyalty lay and was an insult to Hutchinson on many levels. Adams stands at a table, the index finger of his left hand pointing to the Massachusetts Charter spread out before him. In his right hand, he holds the instructions created by the Boston Town Meeting on the day after the Boston Massacre, demanding that troops be removed from the town of Boston. The demand had been made to Hutchinson, and Hutchinson had caved. Everyone who saw the portrait of Sam Adams knew immediately what it was meant to convey: Hutchinson was an attempted usurper of power; Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty were protectors of the colony. The Roman columns, subtly presented in the background of the portrait, only emphasize the “association [of the Sons of Liberty] with republican virtue and rationality.”3

  Positioning the portrait of Sam Adams side by side with the “simple and unadorned” portrait of Hancock underscored the virtue and determination of both men and deliberately connected their leadership with the Puritan past of Boston. Hutchinson had considered Hancock, a rich merchant with a taste for luxury and beauty, to be a strange choice to lead the men on the street against the Royal administrators; after all, Hancock was more like an English lord than a North End dockworker in his tastes, education, and lifestyle.

  But Hutchinson had forgotten where John Hancock came from. He was the son of a country minister who had taught his son the Puritan values of duty to community and sacrifice for the larger good. Reverend Hancock had sought in the small village of Braintree an opportunity for every soul in the community to know each other, to help each other, to communicate a desire for living a better life and join efforts across the community to reach a better life for all. Now his son John sought the same in the larger community of Boston.

  Hancock not only helped both established and aspiring merchants of his colony; he also dedicated his funds and effort to improving life for all Bostonians. He had a bandstand built on the Boston Common and employed musicians to play there. He planted lime trees along the streets bordering the Common and laid out pathways for walking through the large public space. He gifted the town with a fire engine, and the selectman responded to the generosity by naming the vehicle in his honor—“the John Hancock”—and stationing it close to Hancock’s Wharf.

  Hancock contributed vast amount of funds to rebuild the Brattle Street Church, long in need of renovation, and allocated specific funds for the acquisition of a new pulpit, crafted from mahogany; a deacon’s seat, also to be built from mahogany; a special table for communion; and a magnificent bell for the new belfry. When the pulpit could not be finished in time for the first sermon in the new church, Hancock made sure a pine substitute was made to be used in the meantime. He contributed money for another local church to purchase a new bell and for yet another to purchase a much-needed replacement Bible.

  The destitute of Boston were most often on the receiving side of Hancock’s generosity, with firewood provided in the cold months, paid work in the busy months of summer, and sustenance, both actual and spiritual, all year long. A specific bequest was made by Hancock to the Brattle Street Church to assist those “poor widows and others … who are reputable persons and unable to furnish themselves with seats” in the church.4

  And when his younger brother, Ebenezer, turned to Hancock for help—not for the first time—having once again fallen into severe economic straits, John bailed him out of bankruptcy and set him up in a small shop in Boston. He then advised his brother, responsible now not only for himself but also for his pregnant wife, Elizabeth Lowell, to “Reflect on your former imprudencies and resolve to quit yourself like a man … always remember that by diligence and industry and good conduct a man will rub through this world with comfort … you are dependent on your own industry for your support, and that of your family … above all, be steadfast and unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.”5 Lessons of the father, to be shared among the sons.

  * * *

  In February 1772, Abigail Phillips Quincy gave birth to a baby boy. The child was named Josiah, after his father and grandfather, and both men were overjoyed with his arrival. By all appearances, he was a sturdy child, quickly growing plump and rosy-cheeked, much to his mother’s joy and relief. The hoped-for heir, who would carry on the family values of community and faith, had been born as planned and was flourishing, as prayed for.

  * * *

  John Adams began traveling frequently into Boston as his legal work picked up; he even rented a small office in the city to address the “speedy revival of the suing Spirit,”6 brought on by the renewal of trade with England. Just as Hancock had been courted by Hutchinson, Adams found he too was inundated with offers from local Crown officials to join their side. Adams wrote in his diary of how easy it would be to succumb, for such acquiescence would “make the Fortune of me and my Posterity forever.”

  Nevertheless, John remained firm in his resolve to resist the temptations posed: “I dread the Consequences … of such a Sacrifice of my Honour, my Conscience, my Friends, my Country, my God,” predicting that the consequences would be “nothing less than Hell Fire, eternal Torment.”7 For the time being, he kept his head down, his nose to his desk of legal work, and his home—and heart—in Braintree.

  John resumed the court circuit and once again began attending court in Plymouth, Barnstable, Taunton, Cambridge, and other towns throughout New England. The travel was a heavy burden, felt by both John and Ab
igail. They had taken their months together for granted and now sorely missed each other’s company.

  John wrote to Abigail in May, while out on the circuit, “I wish myself at Braintree. This wandering, itinerating Life grows more and more disagreable to me. I want to see my Wife and Children every Day, I want to see my Grass and Blossoms and Corn, &c. every Day. I want to see my Workmen, nay I almost want to go and see the Bosse Calfs’s as often as Charles does.”8 And above all else, after his wife and children, he missed the comfort and peace of his library: “I want to see my books.”9

  * * *

  Sometime in the year 1772, John Hancock commissioned Master Copley to paint a portrait of Dorothy Quincy. He instructed the artist to convey both Dolly’s youth (although she was no longer considered a young woman at age twenty-five) and her virtue, which Copley did by dressing her in a modest gown, over which she wore a diaphanous apron embroidered with flowers. Copley also showed, through the intensity of her eyes, the seriousness of her expression, and the set of her chin, that Dolly was no simpering fool: under the direction of either John or Dolly or both, Copley was instructed to portray the woman as both intelligent and thoughtful.

  The hallmark of the final portrait was not her beauty, for Dolly was not presented as a beauty or even as pretty; instead she appeared smart, strong-minded, and austere, a perfect role model for the Puritan-bred colonial woman. Hancock was well-pleased with the Copley portrait of Dolly, and displayed it in pride of place over the mantel in his dining room.

  It was time now to introduce Dolly to more of the Hancock family. John and Dolly, accompanied by Aunt Lydia, traveled to Bridgewater, a small village to the south of Boston set deep in the rolling countryside. John’s mother, Mary, lived there, and had for the past twenty years, after marrying Daniel Perkins, minister of the local parish church. Reverend Perkins and his wife welcomed the young couple and Lydia into their home. With their welcome, they gave their blessing to the union of John and Dolly.

  In the fall, after they returned to Boston, John Hancock wrote to Jonathan Sewall about the “connection formed with the sister of your lady [Sewall’s wife, Esther]” and the need to keep between the two men “a perfect harmony and friendship” in view of that connection. And yet still no formal marriage proposal had been forthcoming from John to Dolly. Was it John who delayed the offer or Dolly who had made clear her reluctance to accept it?

  Dolly was perhaps worried about John Hancock’s health and his chronic struggle with gout. Already in 1768, he had complained of ill health—“I am very unwell,” he wrote in a letter—but the symptoms of gout first appeared and then intensified throughout 1771.10

  By 1772, his doctor, Joseph Warren, confirmed the diagnosis of gout. Swollen ankles, knees, and feet; skin the color of sea thrift, brilliant pink rings of pain. At times the pain was so intolerable that Hancock could not even leave his bed to attend town meetings and fulfill his role as moderator. Not even being carried in a sedan chair helped, as the slightest jostle of swollen limb against wooden frame caused the most exquisite pain, which brought him almost to fainting.

  And yet Hancock remained committed to carrying out his political and social duties, rising from bed whenever possible and attending town meetings, get-togethers at the Bunch of Grapes, and always, always, the dinner parties planned by Lydia. The gout came and went—“I am so surprisingly recovered that I have plunged myself into the business of life again,” he wrote to a friend after a bad spell ended—and by the end of July 1772, Hancock was well enough to take a boat trip with a group of male friends.11 For two weeks, the men enjoyed leisurely sailing on the Boston Packet, a sleek vessel stocked with food and wine, and servants brought along to keep everyone comfortable.

  * * *

  As summer of 1772 turned to fall, it seemed as if the ambitions of John Adams had truly gone into hibernation; he desired nothing more than to sit with Abigail by the fireplace, a book on his lap and a lovely view out the window over his lands and the sea. He had a new baby boy now at home, Thomas, born on September 15, and his large family, from chubby little Tommy to sturdy Nabby, made him proud.

  As his legal work increased, money worries had lessened. Politics faded from his mind. Years ago, he had promised his friend Richard Cranch (and his wife, Abigail) that he had left behind “Politicks … and the Governor and all his Friends and Enemies.”12 John now intended to make that promise stick.

  But still, in the recesses of his brain, desire for something more lurked. When a chance arose to purchase the building in Boston in which his town offices were housed, Adams found he had both the money and the willingness to do so. With such a building, he could move the family back to Boston and once again live and work from home, in the city where so many legal cases now clamored for representation. But should he move the family, pick up everything and return to the scene of so much stress and conflict?

  Without consulting Abigail—a first for him, but perhaps he was worried that she would reject the idea—John decided to take the chance and buy the building in Boston. And yet he was still determined, as he wrote in his diary with vehemence, to stay out of politics in Boston: “I shall come with a fixed Resolution, to meddle not with public Affairs of Town or Province. I am determined, my own Life, and the Welfare of my whole Family, which is much dearer to me, are too great Sacrifices for me to make.… I will devote myself wholly to my private Business, my Office and my farm, and I hope to lay a Foundation for better Fortune to my Children, and an happier Life than has fallen to my Share.”13

  Without fanfare, John told Abigail to prepare to move to their new home; it was a fine building, he told her, located on Queen Street in Boston.

  * * *

  Samuel Quincy was also laying careful plans that involved both avoidance of politics and the securing of wealth. But unlike John Adams, Sam’s wealth was tied to the Crown, and no matter how he tried to separate his own work as solicitor general from Governor Hutchinson’s administration of the colony, the fact was, he was paid by the Crown and it was to the Crown that he owed his allegiance. And yet the manner in which Sam was perceived was not always clear-cut. Phillis Wheatley, a well-known black poet, wrote a poem in Sam’s honor that was to be published in a collection of her works.

  Wheatley was a black slave, owned by the Wheatley family of Boston, whom Sam served as family solicitor. She first achieved fame both in the colonies and in England for a poem she wrote in 1770, eulogizing the English minister and evangelist George Whitefield. An ardent colonist, though enslaved, Phillis wrote a series of poems elevating events and heroes of the colonial movement against British oppression; because Sam Quincy had prosecuted the perpetrators of the Boston Massacre, Wheatley saw him as a hero and titled her poem “To Samuel Quincy, a Panegyrick.”14

  Unfortunately, sufficient subscribers for the poetry volume could not be found and it was never published; the poem written in Sam’s honor disappeared. But Wheatley was probably not alone in her view of Sam Quincy as a patriot. Loyalist or patriot—Sam still wondered if there was a way that he could be both.

  * * *

  In early fall of 1772, news arrived from England of yet another bill passed by Parliament with the intention of controlling colonial courts and legislatures. For months, there had been protests against Parliament’s decision to pay the salary of Governor Hutchinson directly from the Crown; now this new bill required that the salaries of judges would also be drawn from the Crown budget, and not paid out of moneys controlled by the colonial legislatures.

  Josiah Quincy Jr. quickly took to his pen to challenge the practice of paying colonial judges from the Crown’s purse. As a father now, Josiah felt the weight of the legacy he had always wanted—a son who would be both proud of him and emboldened in his own life to strive for the betterment of all mankind—“I wish to see my country free and happy; that my children may partake as fair an inheritance as I have received.”15

  The urgency of creating the legacy intensified as Josiah’s health deteriorated. U
ndaunted by the return of nighttime fevers and a purulent cough, Josiah used his illness as a spur, not only for himself but for others; he proclaimed himself publicly as being “advanced … in infirmity” and thus eager to “render the small residue of my days profitable to my species.”16

  Once again relying on the language of oppression and revolt, Quincy published a stirring diatribe in the Boston Gazette that stressed the necessity of impartial judges in a courtroom: “So sensible are all tyrants of the importance of such courts, that, to advance and establish their system of oppression, they never rest until they have completely corrupted, or bought, the judges of the land.… My countrymen, Great Britain, with legislative solemnity, has told you she can bind you and yours by her laws, when the parliament please.… Who appoints, who displaces our judges, we all know. But who pays them? The last vessels from England tell us—the judges and the subalterns have got salaries from Great Britain! Is it possible this last movement should not rouse us, and drive us, not to desperation, but to our duty?”17