“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 I think he just sensed that with most of the Townshend duties repealed, no troops patrolling the streets, and no new measures from Parliament, Bostonians were ready for a less confrontational political approach.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.))