Key figures: John Hancock, Charles Thomson, John Adams
Summary
John Hancock, a wealthy Boston merchant who had inherited a lucrative import-export firm from his uncle Thomas Hancock in 1764, was unanimously elected President of the Second Continental Congress on May 24, 1775, succeeding Peyton Randolph. He held that office throughout 1776, presiding over Congress during its most consequential year: the July 2 vote adopting Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence, and the July 4 adoption of the text of the Declaration of Independence. As presiding officer, Hancock did not draft the Declaration — that task fell to the Committee of Five led by Thomas Jefferson — but he directed the floor proceedings that brought it to a vote and oversaw its transmission for printing.
Hancock is best remembered for his signature on the Declaration. The engrossed parchment copy, handwritten after Congress ordered it on July 19, was signed by most delegates beginning August 2, 1776. Hancock, as president, signed first, placing his name in large, bold script beneath the text and roughly centered on the page — considerably larger than the signatures around it. The distinctiveness of this signature later gave rise to “John Hancock” as an American colloquialism for a person’s signature. He had also authenticated the Declaration’s first published version, the Dunlap broadside, printed and distributed the night of July 4–5, 1776; because the broadside preceded the engrossed and fully signed parchment, Hancock’s name (as president) and that of Charles Thomson (as secretary of Congress) were the only two names publicly attached to the document at that time.
By 1776, Hancock was already a marked man in British eyes: following the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Massachusetts royal governor and British commander General Thomas Gage issued a proclamation of pardon to Massachusetts rebels that pointedly excluded Hancock and Samuel Adams, elevating Hancock’s standing among Patriots as a wanted fugitive of the Crown. He also held the rank of senior major general of the Massachusetts militia during this period, a largely honorary command exercised while his primary duties kept him in Philadelphia presiding over Congress.
Significance
Hancock’s presidency of the Continental Congress placed him at the procedural center of the Declaration’s adoption, and his singular, oversized signature made him the most visually identifiable of its signers — a symbol so enduring that it entered everyday American speech as a synonym for one’s signature. A popular legend holds that Hancock declared he signed large enough for King George III to read it without his spectacles, or that he wished the King to see it without needing spectacles; historians regard this story as apocryphal, a later embellishment with no contemporary evidence, since Congress had no intention of sending the parchment to the King and no specific British bounty targeted Hancock over the signature itself.
As the first and most conspicuous name on both the Dunlap broadside and the engrossed Declaration, Hancock’s role helped cement his historical association with the founding act of American independence, reinforcing his status — already secured by his wealth, his militia rank, and his position as a hunted rebel after Lexington and Concord — as one of the Revolution’s most prominent public figures in 1776.