The second time John Hancock’s name was lifted to the top of Congress, it was less a summons to govern than a bet on the power of a signature. The war was over; the treaty had been ratified; the chair in the national chamber had begun to pass each year to a different steward who kept the papers moving and the façade intact. In that rotation, which felt at once ceremonial and necessary, the delegates reached for a figure whose autograph had become the emblem of independence. They chose him again, the man whose ink in 1776 had swelled like a flag across the page, hoping that prestige could do what statutes could not—pull far-flung men to a seat of government that had money in theory and authority mostly on paper. He accepted with the politeness of a gentleman who knew what his name could do and what his joints could not. He promised to arrange his affairs, to take the road, to sit where the law now lived. He did not arrive. An absence became the shape of a year.

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