Mayflower Compact

The date is November 10, 1620. After 66 days at sea crammed into a space about the size of a basketball court, the Pilgrims--as the 101 surviving passengers of the "Mayflower" became known--arrived on America's shores. They were an ocean away from their home country and hundreds of miles from where they were supposed to settle in the Virginia Colony. To survive in the wilderness of this strange, new land, they would need some rules for governing themselves and their community. The document they wrote is known as the Mayflower Compact. In fewer than 200 words, it laid the groundwork for democracy in America. So what is the Mayflower compact? What are some facts that correspond with it and how it has shaped America and our government today?

Invaders and explorers of the Americas had many flawed aspects, one of which being a lack in self-governing. With out having rules to abide by everyone will want to rule and run things they think things should be run. And with a bunch of foreign settlers this didn’t make it easy. They all tried to set up different types of government within the same colony/group. The Mayflower’s passengers knew that the New World’s earlier settlers struggled due to a lack of government; ergo the Mayflower compact. The Mayflower Compact is a written agreement composed by a consensus of the new Settlers arriving at New Plymouth in November of 1620. They had traveled across the ocean on the ship Mayflower, which was anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Mayflower Compact was drawn up with fair and equal laws, for the general good of the settlement. They settlers off the mayflower knew that they needed to work together in order to build up their colony by working, trading and training for war.

Forty-one people signed the Mayflower compact (all males of course), some more familiar then others such as: John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, Isaac Allerton, Myles Standish, and John Alden. When creating the Mayflower Compact, the signers believed that covenants were not only to be honored between God and man, but also between each other. They had always honored covenants as part of their righteous integrity and agreed to be bound by this same principle with the Compact. John Adams and many historians have referred to the Mayflower Compact as the foundation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution and the Mayflower Compact were formed on the same bases. The bases of equality and the fact that everyone was created equal. It also indirectly states back to the Constitution that we all have unalienable rights. "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit Of Happiness”

Luckily we are made aware of its relevance to their 21st century lives. This book/story is essential for any school, public, or home library. "The Mayflower Compact" acts as a valuable reminder of the time when America was merely an idea being shaped in the minds of our forefathers, eager to escape oppression and create a better world.