‘King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father’
By Brooke Barbier
Harvard University Press, 320 pages

A wealthy merchant who dressed well and liked to show off his finery, president of the Second Continental Congress, governor of Massachusetts, and possessed of a bold, elegant signature that became synonymous with writing your own name, John Hancock today is commonly thought of as an insurance company and a towering building at Boston and not as the rival of President Adams and his cousin, Samuel Adams, who scorned the businessman’s ostentation and popularity with the populace.

As Hancock’s  biographer points out, he did not so much lead as respond to the public will. He did a good business with the mother country. He was no revolutionary to begin with and only changed his conciliatory policy toward the British as the agitation for independence accelerated.

Like many colonists of all classes, Hancock resented the imposition of British taxes, eventually joining the outcry against the 1765 Stamp Act, protesting the lack of American representation in Parliament. When he refused the right of customs agents to search one of his ships, he became a symbol of resistance.

Though Hancock’s great wealth excited resentment, he mitigated criticism by opposing overbearing British rule even when it meant his business would suffer. That a man of Hancock’s prominence could be swayed by popular opinion had a powerful impact on his reputation. His engaging personality won over the lower orders as he socialized with them and talked in a down-to-earth fashion that strident radicals like John Adams disdained.

The irony, Brooke Barbier demonstrates, is that “King Hancock” was temperamentally more of a democrat than John or Samuel Adams ever were. He inspired affection, not just respect, and responded to the growing calls for revolution much like his fellow citizens who were not radical but could see that radical actions would be necessary were they to fully enjoy their rights.

After the Revolution, Hancock supported the new Constitution, abolishing the Articles of Confederation.  The vote to ratify a new form of government was a close call at Massachusetts, where concerns about the state’s rights were paramount among anti-federalists who feared the tyranny of a centralized rule. Hancock’s advocacy for certain amendments — many of which were adopted as the Bill of Rights — secured his place on the right side of history.

Hancock’s success might seem inevitable given his resources, his canny political sensibility, and just plain good fortune. Yet, as Ms. Barbier suggests, biography and history are contingent. What looks inescapable did not seem so to those who struggled to create a new country.

Ms. Barbier makes good use of the term “hindsight bias,” which is the bane of biography and history, wherein “people see the result of a past event as predictable or logical,” so that, for example, biographies of President Washington find in every instance of his early years confirmation of the great man he was to become.

Certainly, the “Sons of Liberty” left nothing to chance. In Ms. Barbier’s book, this group bullied the populace into adopting more radical measures and stage-managed public celebrations and other propagandistic activities meant to enhance support of the revolution. That Hancock had his own power base among the people infuriated his rivals. 

Perhaps what is most striking about Hancock is that he almost never carried grudges as John Adams did — though Hancock, pleading illness, offended Mr. Washington, who expected the then Massachusetts governor to call on him, even as Hancock maneuvered to have Washington first visit him.

John Adams seems to have mistaken Hancock’s cultivation of popularity for lack of principle, and yet, as his cousin Samuel Adams came to realize, when elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, he could not hope to make an impact on public opinion unless he reconciled with Hancock.

In Ms. Barbier’s telling, Hancock is a very appealing figure, inviting tradesmen into his home, commissioning a portrait of his hatter, and generally conferring, in the 18th-century usage of the term, a benignant condescension on those who served him.

Hancock’s critics could grouse all they wanted about his winning ways, but without courting the people, Ms. Barbier suggests, what signature can radicals put on history?

Mr. Rollyson is the author of “American Biography” and is at work on “Making the American Presidency: How Biographers Shape History”