John Hancock – President of the Second Continental Congress (1775–1777)

In May of 1775, when John Hancock rose from his seat and walked slowly to the front of the chamber in Philadelphia, he was walking into a role that did not quite exist yet. The Second Continental Congress had reconvened under a new sky. Between its first and second sessions, there had been gunfire at Lexington and Concord, blood on New England grass, and British troops penned up in Boston by angry farmers turned soldiers. Peyton Randolph, the dignified Virginian who had presided the previous fall, was once again chosen as president, but he did not stay long. Affairs in Virginia and his own health pulled him home. When he left, the delegates had to decide who would hold the center of their improvised government. They chose Hancock, not just because he was available, or b ...