Wealthy Revolutionist

JOHN HANCOCK: PATRIOT IN PURPLE (422 pp.) -- Herbert S. Allan -- Macmillan ($6).

For many years John Hancock has needed no other credentials than the flourishing signature (twice the size of anyone else's) with which he signed the Declaration of Independence. Many a schoolboy has heard what Hancock reportedly said then: "There! John Bull can read my name without spectacles, and may now double his reward of -L-500 for my head. That is my defiance." It was enough to make John a bona fide hero in all textbooks, engravings on schoolroom walls, and advertisements for a prominent insurance company. But obviously there was more to be said.

John Hancock: Patriot in Purple is the sort of biography that has lately become fairly common--a valuable study of a neglected historic figure, written, however, with an air of almost deliberate carelessness, in a scratchy and repetitious prose style, and with modern, skeptical yawns breaking in on the high-minded speeches of the patriots.

Judgments in Journalese. It takes a cool, mildly psychoanalytical, yet not quite Freudian view of the central character; it takes something of a doctrinaire, but not fully Marxian view of political events. It makes passing mention of the vices, mistresses and scandals of historic figures, as illustration of their human frailty.

Like most such books, this one remains readable despite all the impediments that a style of exaggerated journalese can throw in the way. Example: "With his nostrils distended by the provocative odor from 600 half-barrels of pistol powder, which he had foresightedly ordered from London, Thomas now turned into a full-fledged, fire-eating merchant of death."

Mansions & Masses. From his merchant uncle, John Hancock inherited a fortune, an interest in 20 ships, a vast mansion on Beacon Hill, with one of the loveliest gardens in Boston. He graduated from Harvard, worked in his uncle's countinghouse, visited England, returned to Boston two years before his uncle's death, and took over the business in a year when trade declined 80%.

He was a classic example of the son of wealth who becomes a revolutionist. His inability to cope with the problems of business drove him to search for a new career; his increased taxes, which he believed were greater than any paid in England, gave him a sense of personal grievance; his ability to pay for wine and fireworks for his supporters made him popular; his vanity and his love of display made him malleable in the hands of politicians; his property helped to make the revolution seem respectable, and his essential conservatism made him a valuable check against the radicals.

He was a good chairman of the Continental Congress that drafted the Declaration of Independence, but so completely misjudged his own standing with the delegates that he was stunned when he was passed over and Washington chosen Commander in Chief. He was fair, hardworking, honest, and increasingly unpopular with his colleagues; Congress even refused to pass a resolution thanking him for his services.

Yet his standing with the voters remained. When his career seemed over, he was elected first governor of Massachusetts by 9,475 out of 10,383 votes cast. Ill health drove him into retirement, but after Shays's Rebellion he was re-elected by 18,000 out of 24,000 votes. He was charged with extravagance, a love of display, vanity, cowardice, with malingering, smuggling, and acting for the revolution only to save his own property. The masses seem to have first been directed toward him by Sam Adams, who intended to use him for his own ends. But the masses remained faithful to him. Again & again readers may be reminded of a parallel between Hancock's career and that of another wealthy man's son who identified himself with the masses, Franklin Roosevelt.

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