King Hancock by Brooke Barbier

Author:Brooke Barbier [Barbier, Brooke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780674271777
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2023-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

In the middle of one night, an express letter from Washington arrived for Hancock advising that Congress evacuate Philadelphia. It was not the first time a messenger had interrupted Hancock in the darkest hour of night and told him to flee—Revere had done that two years earlier. His past experience and being already dressed helped him to act quickly. He raised the alarm for the rest of the town and then “Rous’d the Members,” who were staying in boarding houses throughout town.19

Hancock then “fix’d my Packages, Papers, &c in the Waggons and Sent them off, about 3 oClock in the morning I Set off myself.” The roads were filled hundreds of other fleeing civilians—children wailed, women scattered, and wagons rattled against an undercurrent of terror. The delegates hustled westward and eventually settled in York, Pennsylvania, while Howe and his troops took over Philadelphia shortly after. In contrast to Baltimore, York was “pleasant enough,” but the workload was exhausting.20

Congress had set a new schedule with two sessions a day. A bell called them to convene at ten in the morning and they met until one. Hancock took his midday meal at a tavern before the second session began at four and continued until nine in the evenings, “which is too much.” His only private moments came in the evening when he also had to attend to presidential matters. “I cannot stand it much longer in this way,” Hancock assessed.21

The constant work was no way for someone predisposed to sickness to live. Not surprisingly, he started to feel unwell. Before leaving Philadelphia, Hancock had gone riding in the rain, which gave him “a Touch of the Cholick” and caused him considerable worry. In addition, his gout had returned—“my old disorder”—and he frequently wrote to Dolly complaining that he was exhausted or ill. His body was feeling the effects of three arduous moves in the middle of a war, the death of his only child, his wife’s departure, and seemingly unending work.22

Hancock hoped his wife might comfort him during this trying time. He never lost hope that she would write despite her past epistolary silence. He promised that for every letter she wrote him he would write a letter back. This proposal for equal correspondence did not sway Dolly: within two weeks he chided her for not sending “a single word … I expected oftener to have been the object of your attention.”23 They were both mourning the loss of their first child, but Dolly did not find solace in or share her grief with her husband.

Hancock found other ways to console himself. Ever the epicurean, Hancock turned to food and wine. He asked Dolly to procure an item he did not have access to that he craved: pickles. In two separate letters, Hancock mentioned pickles to his wife and hoped she would send some to him—a request she ignored. Hancock’s “hope to get them” drove him to send someone else to buy them. He also asked Dolly about cherries, hoping that she’d “feasted on them” and wished he could have some of his own.

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