JOHN DICKINSON.
From Du Simitière's Thirteen Portraits (London, 1783). Cf. Heads of illustrious Americans (London, 1783). The usual portrait is given in Higginson's Larger History, p. 270.
McKean, in 1814, said it was not so,[709] and the best investigators of our day are agreed that the president and secretary alone signed it on that day, though Lossing, following Jefferson, has held that, though signed on that day on paper by the members, it was in the nature of a temporary authentication, and it did not preclude the more formal act of signing it on parchment, which all are agreed was done on August 2d following. Thornton, of New Hampshire, signed as late as Nov. 4th; and McKean, who was absent with the army, seems to have temporarily returned so as to sign later in the year. Thornton's name appears in the printed Journal as attached to the Declaration on July 4th, and McKean's is not, though McKean was present and Thornton was not. The fact is, the printed Journal is not a copy of the record of that day, and was made up without due regard to the sequence of proceedings, when prepared by a committee for the press in the early part of 1777. There is in Force's American Archives (4th ser., vol. vi. p. 1729) a journal constructed by combining the original record (of which we have no printed copy) and the minutes and documents of the official files. From a collation of all these early records it appears that the vote of January 18, 1777, ordering the Declaration to be printed with the names attached,—then for the first time done,—made it convenient to use this printed record in making the published Journal entry under July 4th. In this way the name of Thornton, who signed it even subsequent to Aug. 2d, appears in that printed record as having been put to the Declaration on July 4th. That any paper copy was signed on July 4th is not believed, from the fact that no such copy exists; and if it be claimed that it has been lost, there is still ground for holding rather that it never existed, inasmuch as no vote is found for any authentication except in the usual way, by Hancock and Thomson, the president and secretary. McKean's criticism was the first to confront the usual public belief of its being signed July 4th, as many respectable writers have maintained since who preferred the authority of the printed Journal and of Jefferson and Adams. Such was Mahon's preference, and Peter Force rather curtly criticised him for it, in the National Intelligencer.[710] Force did not explain at length the grounds of his assertions, and Mahon did not alter his statement in a later edition; but a full explanation has been made by Mellen Chamberlain in his Authentication of the Declaration of Independence (Cambridge, 1885), which originally made part of the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Nov., 1884, p. 273. He gives full references.
The immediate effects of the Declaration in America are traced in Frothingham's Rise of the Republic, p. 548. "No one can read", says Wm. B. Reed in his Life of Joseph Reed (i. p. 195), "the private correspondence of the times without being struck with the slight impression made on either the army or the mass of the people by the Declaration of Independence."
The Declaration was, of course, at once commented on in the Gentleman's Magazine, in Almon's Remembrancer, and in the other periodical publications. Hutchinson's Strictures have been mentioned. The ministry seem to have been behind the Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, referred to in a preceding page, which was ostensibly written by John Lind and privately printed in London in 1776, but was soon published without his name, appearing in five different editions during the year, and was the next year (1777) printed in French both in London and La Haye. In the earlier edition the outline of a counter declaration was included (Sabin, x. 41,281-82). Lord Geo. Germaine is also said to have had a hand in The Rights of Great Britain asserted against the claims of America, which passed through three editions at least, the last with additions, during 1776, beside being reprinted in Philadelphia (Hildeburn, no. 3,352). Sir John Dalrymple and James Macpherson are also thought to have some share in it.[711] Lord Camden's views are given in Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors (v. 301). It soon became apparent that the liberal party in England felt that the Declaration showed the Americans determined to act without their continued assistance (Smyth's Lectures, ii. 439). Bancroft (ix. ch. 3) traces the general effects in Europe.[712]
The appearance, Jan. 8, 1776, of the Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine, a stay-maker and sailor whom Franklin had accredited when he came over in the summer of 1774, had produced a sudden effect throughout the continent.[713]
JOHN HANCOCK. (The Scott picture.)
Perkins (Life and Works of Copley, p. 70) notes three different likenesses of Hancock, painted by that artist. The first represents him sitting at a table, which bears an open book, upon which his left hand lies, while the right holds a pen. This picture, formerly in Faneuil Hall, is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The Copley head has been engraved by I. B. Forrest and J. B. Longacre (Sanderson's Signers), and there is a woodcut in the Memorial Hist. of Boston, iv. p. 5, and another engraving of it in W. H. Bartlett's United States, p. 343. Cf. Gay's Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 358. The German picture from the Geschichte der Kriege in und ausser Europa (Neunter Theil, Nürnberg, 1777), of which a fac-simile is given herewith, is evidently based on this picture, omitting the accessories. A similar picture, with supports of cannon at the lower angles, is in Hilliard d'Auberteuil's Essais, i. p. 152. It seems to have been the likeness known on the continent of Europe, and is perhaps the one referred to by John Adams, in writing to Spener, a Berlin bookseller, when he says, "The portrait of Mr. Hancock has some resemblance in the dress and figure, but none at all in the countenance" (Works, ix. 524). The immediate prototype of the German picture may have been a London engraving, described in Smith's British Mezzotint Portraits as being in an oval, with a short wig and tie at back, and professing to be painted by Littleford, and published Oct. 25, 1775, by C. Shepherd, which was one of a series of American portraits published in London from 1775 to 1778, of which some, says that authority, were reëngraved in Germany. The two other Copley pictures are described by Perkins as being owned by Hancock's descendants: one an oval, showing him dressed in blue coat laced with gold; the other a miniature on copper. There is in the Bostonian Society a photograph of a picture owned by C. L. Hancock. It will be remembered that Hancock's widow married Capt. James Scott; and it is perhaps one of these Copley pictures that is reproduced from an English print in J. C. Smith's British Mezzotint Portraits, p. 1321, and shown in the present engraving (the Scott picture), of which the original, an oval, bears this inscription: "The Honble John Hancock, Esqr, late Governor of Boston in North America, done from an original picture in the possession of Capt. James Scott. Published by John Scott, No. 4, Middle Row, Holborn. Copley pinxt. W. Smith, sculp." Smith also gives another print, which represents Hancock as standing, with the left hand in his pocket, the other holding a letter addressed to "Mons. Monsieur Israel Putnam, major general à Long Island." The face is much like the other.