Matteson, Tompkins Harrison, 1813-1884, artist. Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Previously Recorded by Phyllis Schlafly
On this day, November 11, men on board the famous ship called the Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact, which is regarded as one of the most important documents in American history. It proves the determination of the small group of English Christians to live under a rule of law, based on the consent of the people, and to set up their own civil government.
In a speech delivered at Plymouth, MA in 1802, John Quincy Adams declared that the Mayflower Compact was “perhaps the only instance, in human history, of that positive, original social compact, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government.” Thus, the Pilgrim Fathers anticipated the social contract 70 years before John Locke and 140 years before Jean Jacques Rousseau.
The document was concise and to the point, beginning with the commitment of the signers to Providence: “In the name of God Amen.” After that invocation, the Mayflower Compact read: “We whose names are underwritten, … having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hearof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony: unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”
The Mayflower Compact was sealed by the signatures of forty-one of the Pilgrims. One of the greatest chapters in human history had begun.
