Examining the President’s Pardon Power

In September, Lindsay M. Chervinsky wrote about the President’s power to pardon people at her Imperfect Union website:

The Constitution says that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” This language is unlike many other powers granted in the Constitution. The language is fairly absolute and the pardon power is one of the president’s most unlimited. The courts have largely rejected attempts to limit this power. And yet, the time has come to address this constitutional blind spot.

Chervinsky’s essay noted the roots of the pardon power in traditional monarchy, and how “We are the only democracy with such unfettered pardon power.”

She offered the example of how President George Washington deployed this power.

Washington’s pardons of [David] Blair and the whiskey rebels suggest that there were four factors that he considered when contemplating clemency.

First, he considered whether the petitioners had lived a reputable life prior to the conviction. Was this case a one-off or were they problematic citizens? Most of the people Washington pardoned, including Blair, were veterans of the Revolutionary War.

Second, Washington considered whether the conviction would prevent the petitioner from making a living or providing for their family.

Third, Washington required the petitioners to take responsibility for their actions.

Fourth, Washington expected the petition[er]s to swear loyalty to the Constitution if the charges called into question their patriotism.

I should specify that Washington never wrote a single letter outlining these four factors (history would be much easier if he did write down his thoughts in such articulate fashion). Instead, we can see what mattered to him through a series of letters and questions about the potential pardons.

There are many proposals on the table to limit the pardon power, or at least to ensure its use doesn’t depend on one person’s whims. Those reforms range from a constitutional amendment to various laws defining procedures (laws that a Supreme Court might decide violate the Constitution) to a requirement for simple transparency from the executive branch.

Herrera on “Treason at West Point,” 5 Nov.

On Thursday, 5 November, Ricardo A. Herrera will appear online as part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s “Inside the Vault” series. Rick’s topic will be “Treason at West Point—Benedict Arnold, John André, and the Spies of the American Revolution.”

The institute’s curator will bring out these items from its collection:

• Maj. John André’s letter from June 1780, asking a contact to keep watch on “Arnold the Rebel General,” three months before the plot came apart
• The note sent to André on the morning of his death: “His Excellency Genl. Washington has fixed the Hour at 12 o Clock this Day”
• A Continental officer’s letter written the day after the hanging, condemning Arnold for leaving André “to pay the forfeiture that should have fallen on the traitor”
• An eyewitness’s account of why André’s last request, to be shot instead of hanged, was refused

Ricardo Herrera is senior historian at the George Washington Leadership Institute and George Washington Presidential Library. Previously he was a professor at the U.S. Army War College, and before that an army officer. Rick’s most recent book is The New York Campaign, 1776.

The institute says, “This event is for teachers, students, and their families—and everyone with an interest in history!” Folks who attend the whole program can sign up to receive professional development credits. The program is due to start at 7 P.M. For more information, go to this registration page.

The day after this online event, Rick and I will be cohosting “The British Empire Strikes Back,” the Pursuit of History’s latest weekend exploration of Revolutionary events 250 years later. We’ll be in the Old Barracks Museum in Trenton, New Jersey, a structure used by both Crown and Continental forces as they fought over that region in late 1776 and early 1777.

Freeman at the Concord Museum, 6 Nov.

On Friday, 6 November, the Concord Museum will host Joanne Freeman, the Alan Boles, Class of 1929 Professor of History at Yale.

The event description promises:

a compelling exploration of the Revolutionary era and the ideas, conflicts, and personalities that shaped the founding of the United States.

Drawing on her extensive research into early American politics and public life, Freeman will examine how debates over power, democracy, and citizenship continue to resonate today. This engaging conversation offers new perspectives on the people and choices behind the nation’s beginnings.

Freeman is known for her award-winning books Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic and The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. Her 2010 lecture course on the American Revolution can be watched here, and the 2025 course on America at 250 that she taught with David Blight and Beverly Gage is preserved here.

A seat for Freeman’s appearance at the Concord Museum costs $10, but is free to members and to people tuning in online. The event will start at 7 P.M.

“Their little, low, dirty, and sly insinuating arts and machinations”

As I recounted yesterday, as 1776 began the Massachusetts General Court was in the process of replacing Thomas Cushing as a Continental Congress delegate with Elbridge Gerry.

When he heard that news, John Hancock wrote to Cushing from Philadelphia on 17 January:

I hope this will find you safe arrivd and in the Enjoyment of Domestic Ease and happiness, that you found all your particular Connections well, and not Destitute of many Friends, altho’ some would gladly have it thought that you are totally deserted, but by no means, My Good Friend, let the Circumstance of the Election discourage you from the noble pursuit in which you are engaged, your Cause is just, and I am Confident your Conscience will acquit you.

I can tell you for a truth that you have left in Congress many who are peculiarly friendly to you, and who, had they a Suspicion that you would not have Returnd to Congress, would have given you many Expressions of their Friendship previous to your Departure. I never flatter, but shall ever in future unbosom my self to you, and write freely in Confidence that I can Rely on your Friendship, and from a Conviction that you are Deserving of the Esteem I have for you, and I shall ever feel a pleasure in doing any thing that can Contribute to your Ease or Reputation, as I must say I have Reason to think Endeavours have been made to Disturb both, and which I will not let pass over unnotic’d, for it may Operate further and be the means of stirring up Jealousies and Animosities which had better be nipt in the Bud; of which more in my next.

Severall Members of Congress have mention’d to me the Desire they have to Establish you in that agreeable point of light which your Conduct in their Estimation merits, for that purpose they are framing a Letter to you, to be made such use of as you think best, to be sign’d by a number of them, as they have some how an Opinion that undue Methods have been practic’d which have Operated to your Disadvantage in the late Election, they are very sanguine in this matter, and I assure you that you are mention’d by Respectable Members in the most Advantageous and Agreeable Light, and you may Rely I do not throw any Contradictory Strokes in the way; of this more in my next.

That outreach confirmed an alliance between the two men, both Boston merchants of moderate political instincts. Cushing was now on the Massachusetts Council, helping to exercise executive power in the colony outside Boston. He and Hancock had lots to correspond about, including their political rivals.

Here’s some of Cushing’s 30 January letter, as quoted in Herbert S. Allen’s John Hancock, Patriot in Purple:

Am sincerely obliged to you for your kind offers of…friendship…at a time when I am represented to you as deserted by all others. . . .

Soon after I arrived here, I found you, as well as myself, had been placed in a disagreeable light and measures taken to hurt our influence. I instantly endeavored to remove every impression of this kind. I think I have succeeded and…I shall leave no stone unturned to serve you here. . . .

It is true, I am informed, some few whom…you are well acquainted with…have endeavored by their little, low, dirty, and sly insinuating arts and machinations to destroy my influence among the new members of the House.

Hancock replied to that on 13 February:

…am glad to hear the Reception you met with, and have no Doubt but you will ever Acquit your self the honest Man, and be superior to the Arts and Cunning of Designing Men. I am Oblig’d to you for the hints you give respecting the Designs of some against me, and wish in your next [you] would be as particular as possible, and let me know every thing passing in your Quarter, by the State of the Elections neither you or I were much Neglected.

In particular, Hancock encouraged Cushing to push the Massachusetts government forward in outfitting two warships. On 7 March he wrote:

I must most earnestly entreat and Beg of you that you exert every Nerve in forwarding our two Ships, & that you Employ as many Men in every Department as can possibly work & be of Service in expediting them, in short spare no Expence in forwarding them, for inter nos [between us] some here who are not very friendly to you & I (& of our province you know who) begin publickly to Say that the Massachusetts Ships will be the last finish’d, that they are in no forwardness &c. I want to Counteract them, in order to which you must Exert your self,…

In that letter Hancock also asked, “how were Mr. P— Letters Relish’d”? Hancock evidently wanted to hear how people had reacted to Robert Treat Paine’s bitter complaints in early January about how James Warren had written about him (and Cushing).

Back here I noted how Massachusetts Patriots had urged Paine to let the dispute die. Hancock either hadn’t gotten that message or wanted to hear what people were saying privately.

COMING UP: Wrangling in the General Court.

“Some low dirty arts made use of privately”

Soon after Thomas Cushing read James Warren’s letter sneering at him and Robert Treat Paine, as discussed back here, he received more bad news from Massachusetts.

On 15 Dec 1775 the assembly, with Warren presiding as speaker, listed its choice of “Five Gentlemen to represent this Colony in the Continental Congress…until the last Day of December next”:

the Hon. John Hancock, Esq; Hon. Samuel Adams, Esq; Hon. John Adams, Esq; Hon. Robert Treat Payne, Esq; and Elbridge Gerry, Esq

The Council approved that choice on 18 Jan 1776.

Cushing was out of the Congress, replaced by Gerry of Marblehead, a more aggressive Patriot and an ally of the Adamses. That tipped the balance of Massachusetts’s delegation from moderate to radical for the coming year.

Cushing returned to Massachusetts and took up duties as a member of the Council, then meeting in the Edmund Fowle house in Watertown. He wrote two letters to Paine in February:

At the Election of Delegates for the Congress for the year 1776, we were both struck at. I must refer you to Mr. Hancock for a state of the Votes upon this occasion as I sent them to him; Endeavors have been used to hurt us both in our Influence at Court, by those whom I need not mention as their names & characters are well known to you; It seems we are not men to suit their Turn. We are not subservient enough, we do not pay an implicit obedience to their Sovereign Dictates. . . .

I am sinsible attempts were made to dismiss you as a Delegate. I could never learn the particular objections that were urged against you. The ostensible reason was that it was best to make some alteration annually at least of two of the members; with respect to me, they urged, I should be wanted in the County of Suffolk & that my presence there could not be dispensed with; with respect to you It was said you was appointed a judge of the Superior Court & it was necessary you should be in the province; however with respect to both of us there were, as I am Informed, some low dirty arts made use of privately with some of the new members insinuating that we were timid cautious irresolute & so not fit to answer their purpose in the present day. However I have endeavoured to vindicate your Character & have said what I thought was just & proper with respect to your Conduct at the Congress, & you may depend upon the Continuance of my Freindship.

Cushing’s political career was far from over. He still wielded considerable power in Massachusetts as a leader on the Council, and he was still allied to the province’s most popular politician.

TOMORROW: The words of Chairman Hancock.

Following the Freedom 250 Money

Back in September 2025, I passed on news of how a Trump adherent had tried to gain control of the messaging of America250, the congressionally-chartered organization celebrating the Sestercentennial, and gotten fired.

The Trump White House then converted its Task Force 250 initiative within the Department of Defense to become Freedom 250, its own Sestercentennial organization controlled by the executive branch.

The administration had already diverted nearly $14 million from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to America250 for “Freedom Trucks.” But then those became Freedom 250 vehicles, and about $10 million was rerouted in that direction.

In November 2025, the Department of the Interior’s National Park Service asked its congressionally-designated nonprofit partner, the National Park Foundation, to set up a conduit for funds for Freedom 250. The foundation established a subsidiary, Freedom 250 L.L.C., headed by a veteran of the first Trump administration.

Freedom 250 L.L.C. is funded mostly with taxpayer money. The New Republic cites testimony to the House Natural Resources Committee from the N.P.F.’s chief executive officer: “The majority of Freedom 250’s operating funds come from federal funds appropriated by Congress specifically for the 250th anniversary commemorations.” Mother Jones says that was in the form of a grant “to the tune of $86 million so far, that won’t expire until the end of 2028.”

Of course, this administration isn’t shy about asking corporations and people for more money. In 2025 the Secretary of the Interior appointed the National Finance Director for Trump’s 2024 campaign, Meredith O’Rourke, to the N.P.F. board. In February 2026, the New York Times reported that O’Rourke was “amassing private donations for Freedom 250,” promising big donors “bespoke packages” like private receptions with the President. That leaves the N.P.F.’s website assuring its donors, “Individual and corporate partner donations made to the National Park Foundation are not utilized for Freedom 250 events.”

Wendy Siegelman at NewsTRACS just noted a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from the Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns the online social network Truth Social. For some reason, it’s trying to merge with a company pursuing fusion power. O’Rourke is also on the board of Trump Media.

Trump Media’s new filing discloses that it’s billed Freedom 250 L.L.C. $350,000 for advertising Sestercentennial events. Back in July, Meidas News reported that Freedom 250 was promoting its “2026 Patriot Games scholarship competition” on Truth Social.

That competition for high-school athletes ended with two students each receiving a scholarship worth $125,000.

More money went to Donald J. Trump. The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust owns a little over 40% of Trump Media, so Freedom 250 L.L.C.’s ad buy, using money mostly collected from taxpayers, put over $140,000 into the President’s pocket.

“Care for the Wounded and the Dead” in Lincoln, 30 Oct.

On Friday, 30 October, Minute Man National Historical Park will present a program called “Care for the Wounded and the Dead.”

The event description says:

When the fighting ended on April 19, 1775 a road of carnage stretched over 16 miles from Concord to Boston. Join park staff at the historic Hartwell Tavern in Lincoln, to learn the harrowing stories of those who buried the dead, cared for the wounded and faced an uncertain world in the days following.

Some towns hastily buried the fallen redcoats, even fearing the army would come after them, but they also offered medical care to the British wounded. That care fed into an argument that the Patriots were the more civilized side of the conflict, particularly to refute charges of atrocities after reports of the hatcheted soldier at Concord’s North Bridge.

In the same days, wagons carried the bodies of dead militiamen back to their home towns. I sense that the local wounded also headed home for care. It took a while before the provincial force set up its own hospital, and even then a lot of soldiers preferred sick leave with their mothers and wives to those institutions. Unfortunately, that helped to spread “camp fever” through the countryside.

This Minute Man Park program will tell stories about individuals caught up in that action, starting at 3 P.M. at the Hartwell Tavern site.

The next day, Saturday, 31 October, the park staff will roll out their cannon for presentations on “The King of Battle: Artillery in the American Revolution” at 11 A.M. and 2 P.M.

All these programs are free to anyone visiting the park at the time.

The Need for Checks and Balances on an Executive Branch

Back in July Boston 1775 passed on how the federal government installed new signs at the President’s House site in Philadelphia during the night of the All-Star Game.

The National Park Service unveiled a website displaying eleven of those signs, but not all of them.

Among the other panels at the site is one with the subhead “The Need for an Executive Branch.” It quotes from the Publius/Federalist essays, number 70: “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Except that the panel gets that wrong, as Georgetown professor Adam Rothman just pointed out; the panels says energy is “the leading character.”

That essay, written by Alexander Hamilton, argued for investing the government’s executive power in one man, not a pair or a triumvirate or a council, as some of the states were trying. When he wrote of the superiority of one executive over a “greater number,” as the panel goes on to quote, Hamilton wasn’t referring to the legislature or courts. He was referring to imaginary co-Presidents.

The unspoken assumption undergirding Hamilton’s argument was that the executive would carry out the law, not try to dictate it. Only in that way would a vigorous executive secure “liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.”

At the Broad Street Review, Alaina Johns pointed out another inaccuracy in the new signage:

One panel on executive power lauds [George] Washington for relinquishing the presidency, claiming that “this peaceful transfer of power from Washington to [John] Adams, and every president since, ensures the stability of the government and places the power back where it belongs: in the hands of the American people.”

In truth, that tradition of peaceful transfer lasted from 1797 until 2021, when Trump’s supporters responded to his election loss by storming the US Capitol while waving Confederate flags, carrying guns and zip ties, wounding and killing police officers, smearing the walls of the Capitol with filth, and erecting a noose and scaffold for the vice president as he fled for his life alongside Congress, all while Trump watched in satisfaction.

On returning to power, Trump used the President’s control over federal pardons to erase the charges against his supporters. That is what George Mason feared when he spoke at Virginia’s ratifying convention:

I conceive that the President ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself. It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic. 

White Plains Has Fallen

On 28 Oct 1776, 250 years ago today, the Continental Army had another face-off against the Crown. This time the action happened north of Manhattan Island near a town called White Plains.

On 6 Nov 1776, the Connecticut Journal of New Haven published a long “Extract if a letter from a Gentleman in the army, dated Camp near the Mills, about three miles North of White-Plains, Nov. 1.”

That dispatch described events since the middle of October. In copying this news into his diary, the Rev. Ezra Stiles guessed that the writer was the Rev. Benjamin Trumbull (1735–1820), a chaplain with the Connecticut troops, reporting to his relative, Gov. Jonathan Trumbull. This account certainly focused on Connecticut units and officers.

For the action on 28 October the letter said:

We had intelligence that the enemy with their whole body were advancing towards us; the army were immediately alarmed, and part of Gen. [James] Wadsworth’s brigade, with some other regiments under the command of Gen. [Joseph] Spencer, consisting in the whole of 5 or 600 men were sent out as an advanced party to skirmish with the enemy, and harass them in their march.

We marched on to a hill about one mile & a half from our lines, with an artillery company and two field pieces, and placed ourselves behind walls and fences, in the best manner we could to give the enemy trouble.

About half after nine o’clock our advanced parties all came retreating in before the enemy, and the light parties of the enemy, with their advanced guard, consisting of 2 or 3000 come in sight, and marched on briskly towards us, keeping the high grounds; and the light-horse pranced on a little, in the rear, making a very martial appearance; as our light parties came on to the hills and discovered [i.e., revealed] where we were, the enemy began to cannonade us, and to fling shells from their hobits, and small mortars.

Their light parties soon came on and we fired upon them from the walls and fences, broke and scattered them at once; but they would run from our front and get round upon our wings to flank us, and as soon as our fire discovered where we were, the enemy’s artillery would at once begin to play upon us in the most furious manner.

We kept the walls until the enemy were just ready to surround us, and then we would retreat from one wall and hill to another, and maintain our ground there in the same manner, till numbers were just ready to surround us.

Once the Hessian grenadiers came up in the front of Col. [William] Douglass’s regiment, and we fired a general volley upon them, at about 20 rods distance, and scattered them like leaves in a whirlwind; and they ran off so far, that some of the regiment ran out to the ground where they were, when we fired upon them, and bro’t off their arms and accoutrements, and rum that the men who fell, had with them, which we had time to drink round with, before they came on again.

They formed at a distance, and waited till their artillery and main body came on, when they advanced in solid columns upon us, and were gathering all around us, ten to our one; col. Douglas’s and [Gold Selleck] Silliman’s regiments fired 4 or 5 times on them as they were advancing, and then retreated, but not till the enemy began to fire on their flanks.

Colonels Silliman, Douglas and [James] Arnold behaved nobly, and the men gained much applause. Colonels [Charles] Webb’s, Silliman’s, and Douglas’s regiments had the principal share in the action.

This report estimated that the American forces had lost “may be 70 or 80 killed and wounded” compared to 300 of the enemy. As usual, those figures skewed toward the author’s side; historians now think both sides suffered between 200 and 300 casualties.

Supporters of the Continental cause emphasized how its army had kept up the fight for a while and withdrawn in order instead of running away. But they couldn’t deny that Gen. George Washington’s forces had lost more territory to the king.

“Stifle every private resentment”

As I quoted yesterday, Continental Congress delegate Robert Treat Paine felt insulted about what James Warren had written about him in December 1775—and with good reason.

Paine spent New Year’s Day complaining about Warren’s remark to political colleagues back home in Massachusetts, and to Warren himself.

One of those men, Joseph Palmer, wrote back on 28 January:

I don’t intend to meddle in this matter, any farther than to urge you both, as you regard the good of your distressed Country, to Stifle every private resentment, incompatable with the public good, & conduct yourselves in every respect as your Christian profession requires.

Palmer was from Braintree, a neighbor of and related by a chain of marriages to John Adams, the recipient of Warren’s letter. He had both personal and political reasons for hoping this dispute between friends and colleagues would blow over.

Another Massachusetts legislator whom Paine complained to, Joseph Hawley of Northampton, doesn’t appear to have responded in writing at all.

Warren himself was dismissive, sending Adams a copy of Paine’s response on 31 January with the comment:

a Copy of a Letter, from your Brother Paine, a very Curious one indeed. A model of Invective and dulness. My next may give you the Answer to it.

No “Answer” from Warren survives, so people may have convinced him not to poke Paine further.

Abigail Adams was firmly on the side of her husband’s crowd, writing to John on 21 February:

I have been uneasy upon your account. I know your delicacy must be wounded by the unjust and malicious censures of an unworthy associate, whose self conceit and vanity really makes him an object of contempt and commisiration. He has not only treated your character in a very abusive and ungentlemanlike manner, but descended to low vulgar attacks and Language upon our Worthy Friend.

That seems unfair since Warren had started the trouble by sneering that Paine’s work in the Congress was useless.

Paine remained in Philadelphia as the Congress debated independence, and he signed the Declaration. He also declined a seat on Massachusetts’s highest court, disliking how the legislature had ranked him below Adams.

At the end of 1776 Paine returned to Massachusetts, and Massachusetts politics. Taunton sent him to the General Court, where Warren was speaker. For a brief time at the start of the 1777 session Warren was absent and Paine’s fellow legislators named him speaker pro tempore.

Later the General Court selected Paine to be the the state’s attorney general, and he held that job for more than a decade. He ended his career with an even longer time on the state’s high court at last.

COMING UP: Change for Cushing.

“I cannot describe the Astonishment, Greif & vexation I felt”

In December 1775, a courier brought Continental Congress delegate Thomas Cushing a letter from James Warren, his successor as speaker of the Massachusetts assembly.

Warren addressed that letter to John Adams, and probably expected him to share it with his cousin Samuel Adams. At first Cushing assumed it was meant for the colony’s whole delegation.

But Warren had dropped caustic comments about Cushing (“A certain Collegue of yours has lost or I am mistaken A great part of the Interest he Undeservedly had”) and another delegate, Robert Treat Paine (“Paine I hear is gone to Gratify his Curiosity in Canada. . . . He may possibly do as much good there as at Philadelphia…”).

Paine had just returned from Fort Ticonderoga when Cushing presented him with a copy of Warren’s letter, or at least those lines about the two of them.

There was other news to upset Paine: The Massachusetts General Court was ready to make John Adams the new chief justice of Massachusetts. Paine himself, older and with more years as a barrister, was way down the list of justices.

And now Warren, Adams’s friend and ally, was suggesting the long trip to he’d just returned from was a junket rather than a mission for the Congress.

Paine spent New Year’s Day complaining about Warren’s remarks to Massachusetts legislators Joseph Hawley and Joseph Palmer: “a malicious and Slanderous Correspondence between James Warren & John Adams respecting Mr. Cushing & my self.”

Then Paine drafted a response to Warren, telling him exactly how he felt about that letter:

I cannot describe the Astonishment, Greif & vexation I felt when I read it—if possible explain to me wherein I deserve such Treatment from you—in the close acquaintance of 15 yrs. & more did yo. ever find me unfaithful. Was I not watchfully observant of yr. Interest Reputation & happiness. Has any person been more attentive to the Interest & Welfare of the Family with wch. you are Connected your dulce Domus & presidium [sweet home and protection] & that at a time when my Interest & promotion would have been much promoted advanced by Contrary Conduct.

I mention not these matters to upbraid, but to give you an Idea of the Reasons Reflections with wch. yr. Conduct agitate my mind; I know not what principle to derive yr. Treatment of me from, unless it be that to the opposing of which in Other Persons you owe all yr. Glory, could you not have “perticular freinds” witht. Calumniating ridiculing & degrading your other Freinds.

And that’s just a sample of what Paine had to say.

When Warren later copied the letter he received, he dated it 5 January. That suggests that Paine wrote his draft on the first, stewed for four more days, and finally mailed it.

TOMORROW: Reactions from Massachusetts.

“Taking a great deal of Pains with my Colleague your Friend Mr. Cushing”

When Massachusetts’s delegation arrived at the First Continental Congress in 1774, Thomas Cushing was at its head.

Cushing had served as the speaker of the Massachusetts assembly for several years, putting his name on many of that body’s protests against royal measures. A Boston merchant, he was also the province’s commissary general, purchasing militia supplies.

All the Massachusetts Whigs had worked with Cushing. He also appears to have mentored Samuel Adams during the man’s brief, unhappy try at a mercantile career. By business and temperament, Cushing was close to John Hancock.

(The Massachusetts Provincial Congress had actually named James Bowdoin, a leader on the Council, to the delegation ahead of the speaker, but Bowdoin declined to go to Philadelphia because of illness.)

While Cushing was in Pennsylvania, people back home learned he had failed to carry out an important task. On 26 October, Josiah Quincy, Sr., wrote to his son:

The Reputation of our Friend Mr. C——g is greatly, and I fear deservedly suffering, on Account of his applying the money he received out of the Treasury, to be remitted for the brass Cannon, to the Discharge of his private Obligations.

That came in the middle of the Patriots’ effort to build an artillery force, as I described in The Road to Concord. The royal government would have stopped any cannon that Cushing ordered from Britain from being delivered, but that omission was one strike against the man.

On 2 December, the provincial congress chose delegates for the Second Continental Congress, to convene in May 1775. This time the record listed John Hancock first, followed by Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine.

After that Congress made Hancock its chairman, Cushing was back at the top of the Massachusetts delegation, at least in how their signatures appeared on such documents as the Olive Branch Petition.

At this stage, Cushing proved more cautious than the Adams cousins. According to James Warren, in June 1775 Cushing sent a letter to another legislator downplaying news of the British reinforcing their Boston garrison and asking “whether we had not better discharge part of our Army to prevent Involving ourselves in an Immense Debt.”

As discussed yesterday, Cushing, along with Hancock and Paine, was reluctant to make Charles Lee one of the generals of the Continental Army.

When a new Massachusetts General Court convened without approval from a governor in July 1775, it moved Cushing from the assembly to the Council—“kickd up Stairs,” Samuel Adams wrote. His successor as speaker was James Warren.

On 25 November John Adams sent a long letter about deliberations in the Congress to Joseph Hawley of Northampton. Among his comments was:

But my dear Friend I must, take the Freedom to tell you that the same has happened upon this occasion which has happened on a thousand others, after taking a great deal of Pains with my Colleague your Friend Mr. Cushing, I could not get him to agree with the rest of us in Writing a joint Letter, nor could I get him to say what opinion he would give if it was moved in Congress.

Back in Massachusetts, Warren was growing even more sour about his predecessor. On 3 December, he wrote to John Adams:

It gives me great pleasure to see the Credit, and reputation of my two perticular friends [i.e., the Adams cousins], Increasing here. Their late disinterested Conduct, as it is reported here does them much Honour. A certain Collegue of yours has lost or I am mistaken A great part of the Interest he Undeservedly had. . . .

Paine I hear is gone to Gratify his Curiosity in Canada. A good Journey to him. He may possibly do as much good there as at Philadelphia tho’ I find some People here would not have pitched on him for the Business we suppose he is gone on, and perhaps there are some who would not have done it for any. Many men you know are of many Minds.

John Adams was on his way home to Massachusetts when he met the man carrying that letter. He read it and asked the rider to carry it on to Philadelphia, presumably to Samuel Adams.

The courier didn’t find Adams, so instead he handed the letter to Thomas Cushing.

TOMORROW: Falling out, voting out.

“Mr. Randolph, our former President is here, and Sits very humbly”

In April 1775, John Hancock and Samuel Adams were staying together at the parsonage in Lexington, where Hancock had spent some of his childhood.

The next month, they arrived together at the Second Continental Congress.

On 12 June, Gen. Thomas Gage proclaimed the king’s

most gracious Pardon to all Persons who shall forthwith lay down their Arms and return to the Duties of peaceable Subjects, excepting only from the Benefit of such Pardon, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock, whose Offences are of too flagitious a Nature to admit of any other Consideration than that of condign Punishment.

At that point, Adams and Hancock were still seen as a pair (with Adams first). But by the end of the year the two men had moved into different parties within the Congress.

The First Continental Congress had chosen Peyton Randolph, speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, as its chair until he fell ill in October 1774. The Second unanimously put him back in the chair in May 1775.

Then came news that the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, was calling that colony’s legislature into session. Randolph headed home early on 24 May. As their first business that day, the Congress had to choose a new chair. Everyone voted for Hancock.

In mid-June, the Massachusetts delegation split over the appointment of Charles Lee as a general in the Continental Army. John Adams wrote to James Warren of Plymouth: “C. and H. and P. have given us a great deal of Trouble, in the Election of Lee.” The Adams cousins favored hiring Lee, the experienced and renegade British general; Hancock, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine were dubious.

(As I’ve written before, I don’t believe John Adams’s much later story about how in this period he nominated George Washington as commander-in-chief, angering Hancock, who wanted to be nominated himself, and provoking opposition in the Massachusetts delegation and the whole Congress. Paul Longmore’s analysis convinced me that Adams was probably remembering the argument over Lee, the only personnel dispute he wrote about at the time.)

On 27 June, after news of the Battle of Bunker Hill arrived in Philadelphia, Hancock and the two Adams cousins “went out to enquire after the Committee of this City, in order to beg some Powder” for the army in New England. But cracks were forming in their alliance.

As fall approached, John Adams soured a little on Hancock—first over etiquette, not policy. On 19 September, Adams told Warren:

Mr. Randolph, our former President is here, and Sits very humbly in his Seat, while our new one, continues in the Chair, without Seeming to feel the Impropriety.

A little over a month later, on 22 October, Randolph died of a stroke suffered while dining with Thomas Jefferson. Adams then told Warren:

the Congress have determined to show his Memory and Remains all possible Demonstrations of Respect. The whole Body is to attend the Funeral, in as much Mourning as our Laws will admit. The Funeral is to be tomorrow. I am the more pleased with this Respect on account of an Impropriety, which you know was unfelt.

Abigail Adams picked up that strain, telling Mercy Warren in November:

Mr. Randolphs character has secured him Esteem. How well might some folks have saved their credit, and their Bacon too (as the phraze is) by a resignation of a certain place.

Hancock could have pointed out that he was providing the Congress with stable leadership, not suddenly heading home or falling over dead.

TOMORROW: A change in the delegation.

“He declin’d taking a Seat at the honorable Board”

Yesterday I described how in May 1772 Gov. Thomas Hutchinson reversed the pattern of previous years and accepted John Hancock’s election to the Council, the upper house of the Massachusetts General Court.

The governor hoped that would help to pull Hancock away from the influence of Samuel Adams, a fellow member and clerk of the lower house.

On 28 May provincial secretary Thomas Flucker delivered Gov. Hutchinson’s approval of the list of Council members and a message

desiring that the House would send up John Hancock and Samuel Phillips, Esq’rs; Members of this House, and chosen Yesterday to the Members of his Majesty’s Council, that they may take their Seats at the Board.

Hancock’s response appears in the record of the Massachusetts House:

John Hancock, Esq; acquainted the House that he declin’d taking a Seat at the honorable Board to which he was elected, and gave his Reasons in the House.

Unfortunately, the record doesn’t preserve those reasons, and I haven’t seen any source that states them. Quite possibly Hancock never wanted to be on the Council—he just wanted to be asked.

Hutchinson was still optimistic about converting Hancock to the side of the Crown, or at least convincing him not to fund the Whigs, with such signs of favor. In response to what he perceived as cooperation, the governor brought the General Court back to Boston’s Town House later in 1772.

Gov. Hutchinson’s reports about wooing Hancock reached London. In early 1773 John Wilkes reportedly said he’d heard that “Mr. H. had deserted the Cause of Liberty.” As quoted back here, Adams sent corrective letters to Arthur Lee, declaring such reports were “a scurvy Trick of lying.” As Adams framed it, Colonial Secretary Lord Hillsborough had told Hutchinson to “to promote Mr. H. …But he had Spirit enough to refuse a Seat at the Board, & continue a Member of the House.” (In fact, that strategy was always Hutchinson’s idea.)

I doubt Hancock ever turned against Samuel Adams in the pre-war period. I think he just sensed that with most of the Townshend duties repealed, no troops patrolling the streets, and no new measures from Parliament, Bostonians were ready for a less confrontational political approach. Hancock followed the public mood while Adams continued to push.

Hancock’s real allegiance was to the voters and his reelection prospects. He continued to spend his money in ways that conspicuously benefited Boston: cloth for Dr. Joseph Warren’s suit at that year’s Massacre memorial oration, cloth to drape on the pulpit, a new fire engine. He continued to serve as both a selectman and a representative. And now he was “Colonel Hancock.”

On imperial politics, Hancock continued to side with the Whigs. Though in the next year and a half he wouldn’t take part in Adams’s most radical measures, such as joining the new standing committee of correspondence, he also didn’t block those.

Then came the tea crisis. Both the public mood and Hancock shifted. The merchant joined Boston’s radical leaders at the front of the crowd in the protest meetings in Old South. He delivered the Massacre oration himself in 1774. That fall, he chaired the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. In 1775 he joined the Continental Congress and soon became its president—rising higher in politics than Adams.

TOMORROW: Tensions in the Congress.

(Photo above by Axel R-D, courtesy of Flickr.))