Quotes About John Hancock

John [Adams] supposed there were two reasons why the British had gone after John Hancock. First, they wanted to make an example out of him, showing what would happen to anyone, no matter how rich, who dared to defy the new Townshend Act. Second, John Hancock was the biggest financial support of men like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. In fact, John Adams was reasonably sure that Sam Adams had no money whatsoever and that John Hancock was paying all his bills.

On the night of April 18, 1775, eight hundred British troops marched out of Boston to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock and seize a stockpile of patriot munitions in Concord.

Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): "No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class." George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on.

At the official signing of the parchment copy on August 2, John Hancock, the president of the Congress, penned his name with his famous flourish. There must be no pulling different ways, he declared. We must all hang together. According to the early American historian Jared Sparks, Franklin replied, Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.