John Hancock (Texas politician)
John Hancock ( born October 24, 1824 in Bellefonte, Jackson County, Alabama; † July 19, 1893 in Austin, Texas ) was an American politician. Between 1871 and 1885 he represented two times the state of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Career
John Hancock attended the common schools and then studied at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. After a subsequent law degree in 1846 and its recent approval as a lawyer, he started working in Austin in this profession. Between 1851 and 1855 he was a judge in the second judicial district of Texas. He then practiced again as a private lawyer. He also became planters and ranchers. At the same time he proposed as a member of the Democratic Party launched a political career. In the years 1860 and 1861 he sat as an MP in the House of Representatives from Texas.
Hancock was an opponent of secession and refused after the accession of the State of Texas to the Confederacy to make the oath of allegiance to this new state. He was then expelled from the parliament. After that he worked as a lawyer. Since he still refused to serve in some form of confederation, the pressure on him was so strong that he had to leave Texas. Only after the end of the Civil War he returned there.
Politically, Hancock was a member of the Democratic Party. In 1866 he was a delegate at a meeting on the revision of the Constitution of Texas. In the congressional elections of 1870 he was in the fourth electoral district of his state in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of Eduard Degener on March 4, 1871. After two re- election he was able to complete in Congress until March 3, 1877 three legislative periods. Since 1875, he represented the fifth district of Texas. In 1876, he was not nominated by his party for re-election. 1882 Hancock was elected to Congress again in the newly refurbished tenth district of his state, where he was able to complete a more legislative period between the 4th March 1883, March 3, 1885. In 1884, he did not run.
After the end of his time in the U.S. House of Representatives John Hancock practiced as a lawyer again. He died on July 19, 1893 in Austin.