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The
Mayflower Compact, 1620 |
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After many difficulties
in boisterous storms, at length by God’s providence...we espied land, which we deemed
to be Cape Cod...and upon the 21 of November we came to anchor in the bay [Provincetown
Harbor]...
Occasioned partly by the discontented and mutinous speeches that some of the strangers
amongst them had let fall from them in the ship; that when they came ashore they would use
their own liberty, for none had power to command them, the patent they had being for
Virginia and not for New England, which belonged to another government, with which the
Virginia Company had nothing to do...
William Bradford, Of
Plymouth Plantation |
After the Mayflower had
anchored
off Cape Cod, some of the passengers began to question the authority of the
leaders of the expedition. That authority had been granted for a settlement in the
northern part of Virginia, and not for New England. The Pilgrims drew up an
agreement that the passengers would stay together in a "civil body
politic." That agreement, later known as the Mayflower Compact, was signed on
board the Mayflower on November 22, 1620 by 41 men. The original signed
Mayflower Compact no longer exists, but we know its wording from the writings of Governor
William Bradford.
For the text of the Mayflower
Compact, click here.
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Signing the Mayflower Compact
by Moran |
The
Pilgrims landed at what was to become Provincetown, on Cape Cod, on November 21,
1620. A small party of men, led by Myles Standish, went ashore to explore. They
found a place where Native People had stored corn underground and confiscated it to use
for seed. Due to lack of fresh water and poor soil, they decided to move on.
The Peirce Patent of 1621 superseded the Mayflower Compact. John Peirce,
one of the merchant adventurers, secured it from the Council for New England in London.
This patent gave the Mayflower colonists permission settle in New England. The
patent is the oldest extant state document in New England.
Later Significance of
the
Mayflower Compact |
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The
Mayflower Compact is believed by many to be one of the earliest examples of
democracy in America.
Here was a unanimous and personal assent by all the individuals of the
community to the association by which they became a nation.
John Quincy Adams, 1802 |
Some
historians, although not all, consider it to be the forerunner of the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution.
American
democracy was not born in the cabin of the Mayflower,
or in the Boston town meeting,
but on the farming, fighting frontier of all of the colonies.
Samuel Eliot Morison
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