Nathaniel Gorham’s turn in the chair began not with trumpets but with the small, exacting necessities that keep a weak government from collapsing into embarrassment. The famous man elected to preside—John Hancock, emblem of independence, governor of Massachusetts, a name large enough to be a logo—was largely absent, held at home by illness, comfort, and the quiet calculations of a state politician who knew where his power actually lived. Congress could not wait for a celebrity’s joints to loosen. It needed someone who would come to the room, count the votes that existed rather than the ones a letter promised, and convert the country’s nervous energy into minutes, resolutions, and dispatches that made the semblance of union feel a shade more real than the day before. Gorham, a compact Charlestown merchant with a ledger’s memory and a neighbor’s pr ...