Only Hancock and Charles Thomson, the President and Secretary of Congress, signed the broadside copy of the Declaration, printed the night of its adoption, July 4, 1776, and disseminated to the public the following day. At the formal signing of the parchment copy on August 2, tradition holds that Hancock wrote his name in large letters so that the King would not need spectacles to recognize him as a “traitor.” After resigning as presiding officer in 1777, he remained a Member of Congress until 1780, though he spent much of his time in Boston and for the rest of his life solidified his political position in Massachusetts. In 1778, as a major general in the militia, he commanded an expedition that failed to recapture Newport, R.I., from the British. He made a more tangible contribution to the war by accepting Continental currency from his debtors, even though his fortune had already been dented by wartime-induced reverses.
In 1780, the same year Hancock gave up his seat in Congress and attended his Commonwealth’s constitutional convention, he was overwhelmingly elected as first Governor (1780–85). He won reelection in 1787–93. In the interim (1785–86), he once again sat in Congress. In 1788 he chaired the Massachusetts convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution, which he favored.
While still Governor, in 1793 at the age of 56, Hancock died at Boston. His funeral, one of the most impressive ever held in New England, culminated in burial at Old Granary Burying Ground.
Benjamin Harrison
VIRGINIA
Benjamin Harrison, the most conservative of the Virginia signers except for Carter Braxton, was a member of one of the most prominent planter families in the South and was the fifth in a line of active politicians bearing the same name. Because of his rotundity, joviality, love of good foods and wines, and fondness for luxury, he acquired the nickname “Falstaff of Congress.” His son, William Henry, and his great-grandson, Benjamin, served as the ninth and 23d Presidents of the United States.
Harrison was born in 1726 at his father’s estate, Berkeley, in Charles City County, Va. He matriculated at the College of William and Mary, but left before graduating in 1745 upon the death of his father in order to assume management of the family plantation. Shortly thereafter he married; seven of his children were to survive infancy. In time, his landholdings grew to include eight plantations and other properties, and he also expanded into shipping and shipbuilding. Following the precedent set by his forebears, about 1749 he gained admission to the House of Burgesses. He sat there, frequently as speaker, until 1774, when the Royal Governor disbanded the body.
Harrison’s conservatism manifested itself early in the Revolutionary movement. In 1764 the burgesses, learning about the Stamp Act, impending in Parliament, named a committee to draw up a protest. As one of the committeemen, Harrison helped pen the document. The very next year, however, when the act went into effect, he refused to endorse Patrick Henry’s resolutions urging civil disobedience as a countermeasure. Forced to take a stand as the rift with the Crown widened, Harrison cast his lot with the patriots. Between 1773 and 1776, he shared in the tasks of the Revolutionary conventions, the committee of correspondence, and the provincial congresses.