John Hanson was a merchant and public official from Maryland during the era of the American
Revolution.
After serving in a variety of roles for the Patriot cause in Maryland, in 1779 Hanson
was elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress.
He signed the Articles of Confederation in 1781 after Maryland finally joined the other
states in ratifying them.
In November 1781, he was elected President of the Continental Congress, and became the
first president to serve a one-year term under the provisions of the Articles of Confederation.
While George Washington is universally recognized by historians as the first President of the
United States formed under the United States Constitution, some biographies of Hanson have
made the unconventional argument that Hanson was the first holder of the office.
Early life John Hanson was born in Port Tobacco Parish
in Charles County in the Province of Maryland on April 3, 1721, which in the modern calendar
system is equivalent to April 14.
Sources published prior to a 1940 genealogical study sometimes listed his birth date as April
13 or his year of birth as 1715.
Hanson was born on a plantation called "Mulberry Grove" into a wealthy and prominent family.
His parents were Samuel and Elizabeth Hanson.
Samuel Hanson was a planter who owned more than 1,000 acres, and held a variety of political
offices, including serving two terms in the Maryland General Assembly.
John Hanson was of English ancestry; his grandfather, also named John, came to Charles County, Maryland,
as an indentured servant around 1661.
In 1876, a writer named George Hanson placed John Hanson in his family tree of Swedish-Americans
descended from four Swedish brothers who emigrated to New Sweden in 1642.
This story was often repeated over the next century, but scholarly research in the late
20th century showed that John Hanson was of English heritage and not related to those
Swedish-American Hansons.
Little is known about Hanson's early life; he was presumably privately tutored as was
customary among the gentry of his time and place.
He followed his father's path as a planter, slave owner, and public official.
He was often referred to as John Hanson, Jr., to distinguish him from an older man of the
same name.
About 1744 he married Jane Contee, with whom he would have eight children.
Their son Peter Contee Hanson died in the battle of Fort Washington during the American
Revolutionary War.
Their oldest son Alexander Contee Hanson, Sr. was a notable essayist.
Alexander Hanson is sometimes confused with his son, Alexander Contee Hanson, Jr., who
became a newspaper editor and US Senator.
Political career Hanson's career in public service began in
1750, when he was appointed sheriff of Charles County.
In 1757 he was elected to represent Charles County in the lower house of the Maryland
General Assembly, where he served over the next twelve years, sitting on many important
committees.
Maryland was a proprietary colony, and Hanson aligned himself with the "popular" or "country"
party, which opposed any expansion of the power of the proprietary governors at the
expense of the popularly elected lower house.
He was a leading opponent of the 1765 Stamp Act, chairing the committee that drafted the
instructions for Maryland's delegates to the Stamp Act Congress.
In protest of the Townshend Acts, in 1769 Hanson was one of the signers of a nonimportation
resolution that boycotted British imports until the acts were repealed.
Hanson changed course in 1769, apparently to better pursue his business interests.
He resigned from the General Assembly, sold his land in Charles County, and moved to Frederick
County in western Maryland.
There he held a variety of offices, including deputy surveyor, sheriff, and county treasurer.
When relations between Great Britain and the colonies became a crisis in 1774, Hanson became
one of Frederick County's leading Patriots.
He chaired a town meeting that passed a resolution opposing the Boston Port Act.
In 1775, he was a delegate to the Maryland Convention, an extralegal body convened after
the colonial assembly had been prorogued.
With the other delegates, he signed the Association of Freemen on July 26, 1775, which expressed
hope for reconciliation with Great Britain, but also called for military resistance to
enforcement of the Coercive Acts.
With hostilities underway, Hanson chaired the Frederick County committee of observation,
part of the Patriot organization that assumed control of local governance.
Responsible for recruiting and arming soldiers, Hanson proved to be an excellent organizer,
and Frederick County sent the first southern troops to join George Washington's army.
Because funds were scarce, Hanson frequently paid soldiers and others with his own money.
In June 1776, Hanson chaired the Frederick County meeting that urged provincial leaders
in Annapolis to instruct Maryland's delegates in the Continental Congress to declare independence
from Great Britain.
While Congress worked on the Declaration of Independence, Hanson was in Frederick County
"making gunlocks, storing powder, guarding prisoners, raising money and troops, dealing
with Tories, and doing the myriad other tasks which went with being chairman of the committee
of observation".
Hanson was elected to the newly reformed Maryland House of Delegates in 1777, the first of five
annual terms.
In December 1779, the House of Delegates named Hanson as a delegate to the Second Continental
Congress; he began serving in Congress in Philadelphia in June 1780.
"Hanson came to Philadelphia with the reputation of having been the leading financier of the
revolution in western Maryland, and soon he was a member of several committees dealing
with finance."
When Hanson was elected to Congress, Maryland was holding up the ratification of the Articles
of Confederation.
The state, which did not have any claims on western land, refused to ratify the Articles
until the other states had ceded their western land claims.
When the other states finally did so, the Maryland legislature decided in January 1781
to ratify the Articles.
When Congress received notice of this, Hanson joined Daniel Carroll in signing the Articles
of Confederation on behalf of Maryland on March 1, 1781.
With Maryland's endorsement, the Articles officially went into effect.
Many years later, some Hanson biographers claimed that Hanson had been instrumental
in arranging the compromise and thus securing ratification of the Articles, but, according
to historian Ralph Levering, there is no documentary evidence of Hanson's opinions or actions in
resolving the controversy.
President of Congress On November 5, 1781, Congress elected Hanson
as president of the Continental Congress . Under the Articles of Confederation, the United
States had no executive branch; the president of Congress was a mostly ceremonial position,
but the office did require Hanson to handle a good deal of correspondence and sign official
documents.
Hanson found the work tedious and considered resigning after just one week, citing his
poor health and family responsibilities.
Colleagues urged him to remain because Congress at the moment lacked a quorum to choose a
successor.
Out of a sense of duty, Hanson remained in office, although his term as a delegate to
Congress was nearly expired.
The Maryland Assembly reelected him as a delegate on November 28, 1781, and so Hanson continued
to serve as president until November 4, 1782.
The Articles of Confederation stipulated that presidents of Congress serve one-year terms,
and Hanson became the first president to do so.
Contrary to the claims of some of his later advocates, however, he was not the first president
to serve under the Articles, nor the first to be elected under the Articles.
When the Articles went into effect in March 1781, Congress did not bother to elect a new
president; instead, Samuel Huntington continued serving a term that had already exceeded a
year.
On July 9, 1781, Samuel Johnston became the first man to be elected as president of Congress
after the ratification of the Articles.
He declined the office, however, perhaps to make himself available for North Carolina's
gubernatorial election.
After Johnston turned down the office, Thomas McKean was elected.
McKean served just a few months, resigning in October 1781 after hearing news of the
British surrender at Yorktown.
Congress asked him to remain in office until November, when a new session of Congress was
scheduled to begin.
It was in that session that Hanson began to serve his one-year term.
A highlight of Hanson's term was when George Washington presented Cornwallis's sword to
Congress.
In 1781, during Hanson's presidency, Ned Barnes, one of Hanson's slaves, ran away.
Hanson published an advertisement in the Maryland Gazette, offering a $30 reward for Barnes'
recapture.
Barnes was recaptured, but he stole a horse and ran off again to be with his wife, who
lived on a plantation in Charles County, Maryland.
Hanson gave up on getting Barnes back and instead sold him to the plantation to which
he had escaped.
Death and legacy Hanson retired from public office after his
one-year term as president of Congress.
In poor health, he died on November 15, 1783, while visiting Oxon Hill Manor in Prince George's
County, Maryland, the plantation of his nephew Thomas Hawkins Hanson.
He was buried there.
Hanson owned at least 223 acres of land and 11 slaves at the time of his death.
In 1898, Douglas H. Thomas, a descendant of Hanson, wrote a biography promoting Hanson
as the first true President of the United States.
Thomas became the "driving force" behind the selection of Hanson as one of the two people
who would represent Maryland in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C.
Hanson was not initially on the shortlist for consideration, but he was chosen after
lobbying by the Maryland Historical Society.
In 1903, bronze statues of Hanson and Charles Carroll by sculptor Richard E. Brooks were
added to Statuary Hall; Hanson's is currently located on the 2nd floor of the Senate connecting
corridor.
Small versions of these two statues sit on the president's desk in the Senate Chamber
of the Maryland State House.
Some historians have questioned the appropriateness of Hanson's selection for the honor of representing
Maryland in Statuary Hall.
According to historian Gregory Stiverson, Hanson was not one of Maryland's foremost
leaders of the Revolutionary era.
In 1975, historian Ralph Levering said that "Hanson shouldn't have been one of the two
Marylanders" chosen, but he wrote that Hanson "probably contributed as much as any other
Marylander to the success of the American Revolution".
In the 21st century, Maryland lawmakers have considered replacing Hanson's statue in Statuary
Hall with one of Harriet Tubman.
The idea that Hanson was the forgotten first President of the United States was further
promoted in a 1932 biography of Hanson by journalist Seymour Wemyss Smith.
Smith's book asserted that the American Revolution had two primary leaders: George Washington
on the battlefield, and John Hanson in politics.
Smith's book, like Douglas H. Thomas's 1898 book, was one of a number of biographies written
seeking to promote Hanson as the "first President of the United States".
Regarding the opinion, historian Ralph Levering stated "They're not biographies by professional
historians; they aren't based on research into primary sources".
According to historian Richard B. Morris, if a president of Congress were to be called
the first President of the United States, "a stronger case could be made for Peyton
Randolph of Virginia, the first President of the first and second Continental Congresses,
or for John Hancock, the President of Congress when that body declared its independence."
The claim that Hanson was a forgotten President of the United States was revived on the Internet,
sometimes with a new assertion that he was actually a black man; an anachronistic photograph
of Senator John Hanson of Liberia has been used to support this claim.
In 1972, Hanson was depicted on a 6-cent US postal card, which featured his name and portrait
next to the word "Patriot".
Historian Irving Brant criticized the selection of Hanson for the card, arguing that it was
a result of the "old hoax" promoting Hanson as the first president of the United States.
In 1981, Hanson was featured on a 20-cent US postage stamp.
U.S. Route 50 between Washington D.C. and Annapolis is named the John Hanson Highway
in his honor.
There are also middle schools located in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and Waldorf, Maryland, named
after him.
A former savings bank named for him was merged in the 1990s with Industrial Bank of Washington,
D.C.
In the 1970s, a descendant of Hanson, John Hanson Briscoe, served as Speaker of the Maryland
House of Delegates, which passed "a measure establishing April 14 as John Hanson Day".
In 2009 the John Hanson Memorial Association was incorporated in Frederick, Maryland to
create the John Hanson National Memorial and to both educate Americans about Hanson as
well as counter the many myths written about him.
The Memorial includes a statue of President John Hanson and an interpretive setting in
Frederick, Maryland, where Hanson lived between 1769 and his death in 1783.
The Memorial is in the Frederick County Courthouse's courtyard at the corner of Court and West
Patrick Streets.
Leaders of the Memorial include President Peter Hanson Michael, Vice President Robert
Hanson and Directors John Hanson Briscoe and John C. Hanson.
References
Bibliography
External links
John Hanson at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
John Hanson at the Maryland State Archives John Hanson at Snopes.com