Word: hancock
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...come over. South Carolina's Edward Rutledge entered smiling?ins colony, too, would vote for independence. New York's men still awaited instructions from home, but they would not dissent. That left only Delaware stalemated?one delegate in favor, one opposed, and one back home on business. Bostonian John Hancock, President of the Congress, rapped his gavel. Secretary Charles Thomson began rereading the resolution aloud prior to a vote...
Finally, on July 4, the Congress adopted the Declaration and ordered it "authenticated" and printed. As President of the Congress, John Hancock signed the Declaration, and the congressional secretary, Charles Thomson, attested to his signature. Oddly, no member of the drafting committee seems to have gone along to John Dunlap's shop to supervise the printing?which accounts, perhaps, for the caprices of punctuation, capitalization and spelling that occur in the printed document. On July 5 and 6, the Declaration was sent out to all the colonies, and one copy was inserted into the Congress's "rough" (secret) journal...
Thus last week the dangerous enterprise of American independence began. Besides Hancock, none of the members of Congress signed the Declaration ?that will perhaps come later and may depend somewhat on the American fortunes in the war: if they sign, the members could be hanged for treason...
...bold signature at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence is one of the richest men in the Colonies and one of those most adored by the crowds. He is also one of the vainest. Unsatisfied by his largely ceremonial post as President of the Continental Congress, John Hancock of Massachusetts yearned to be Commander of the Continental Army. When General Washington was named instead, one witness noted a "sudden and striking change of countenance-mortification and resentment." Offered the chairmanship of Congress's Marine Committee, Hancock is now trying to make sure that the most lavishly outfitted ship...
...born in relative poverty, the son of an unassuming parson who died when the boy was seven. He was thereupon adopted by his childless uncle Thomas, a Gargantuan export-import trader (tea, codfish, whale oil) who had built the first mansion on Beacon hill. Uncle Thomas put young Hancock through Harvard, class of '54, and then eight years in the counting room of the House of Hancock. When Thomas Hancock died, he left his 27-year-old nephew a fortune of ?80,000, the largest in New England...