King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father

In this approachable biography, historian Barbier (Boston in the American Revolution) portrays John Hancock (1737–1793) as a political figure with “middle-of-the-road and often shifting political views.” Born in Braintree, Mass., Hancock was raised in Boston by his uncle, a prosperous merchant and smuggler, whose business and wealth Hancock eventually inherited. In 1768, British officials seized his sloop Liberty, claiming it was laden with smuggled wine. Defended in court by John Adams, Hancock became a popular hero in Boston while he was derided by the British as “King Hancock.” Yet Barbier contends that Hancock “was a moderate in a time and place of radicals,” noting that the British lumped Hancock and Samuel Adams together as rabble-rousing traitors, while radical republicans like Mercy Otis Warren referred to Hancock as “the Guilded puppet.” Barbier portrays her subject as a people pleaser, a man who always wanted to “feel accepted and seen,” though she notes that Hancock didn’t get along with everyone—as governor of Massachusetts, he locked horns with President Washington as he “grew more suspicious of the federal government.” It’s a reliable account of Hancock, even if Barbier’s framing of the founding father as a political moderate is not fully realized. (Her view that moderates “are naturally prudent, cautious, and self-protective” sometimes oversimplifies political analysis by turning it into a personality assessment.) Still, American history buffs will enjoy the immersive portrait of Boston’s Revolutionary era. (Oct.)