MAYFLOWER COMPACT

Mayflower Compact



Mayflower Compact

Mayflower Compact

The Mayflower Compact is a written agreement made by a consensus of the new settlers who came to New Plymouth in November 1620. They crossed the ocean on the Mayflower, which anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Mayflower Compact was written with just and equitable laws for the general good of the colony and by the will of the majority. The Mayflower's passengers knew that earlier settlers of the New World failed because of lack of government. They discussed the content and eventually developed the Partnership for its own survival. The Mayflower Contract, English Mayflower Compact, was the first government document to the colony Plymouth. He was of the Pilgrims (English Pilgrim Fathers), on the Mayflower had designed crossed the Atlantic (Cline, 2003).

The Mayflower Compact is an agreement drafted by the Pilgrims during the voyage on the Mayflower from Plymouth in England and Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. It was signed by just under half of the settlers 11 November 1620. The pact, an agreement between the settlers for the administration of the colony of Plymouth, is often referred to as the basis of the constitution of the United States. The Mayflower Compact was the first act of government of the Plymouth Colony. It was drawn up by the Pilgrims while crossing the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. They sought freedom to practice Christianity according to their own choice. This document was signed on 11 November 1620 (old style) by 41 votes out of some one hundred passengers that the ship had, in the current Bay Provincetown (Provincetown Harbor) near Cape Cod.

Background

All 41 men aboard the Mayflower signed the pact. On November 21, 1620 (November 11 according to the calendar Julian still in force in England), the Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod on the coast of the future virgin Massachusetts. The yacht carries a small group of emigrants which some devout Puritans driven from Europe by religious persecution. The passengers included as they have done wrong. They must resign themselves to land on an inhospitable land, unknown to Europeans. In anticipation of the future, they signed the same day on board ship, a pact of understanding. The pact known as the "Mayflower Compact" enacts the principles that should govern the future establishment. He set up a local democracy effective and respectful of all beliefs to which reference is still the U.S. Democrats (Pilgrim Hall Museum, 2001).

The Mayflower was originally scheduled to sail to the mouth of the Hudson, and landed its passengers on a territory ceded by royal patent to the London Virginia Company. But the colonists took the decision to land a little further north, in what is now Massachusetts. By this change, eighteen settlers who the status of serfs engaged had proclaimed that since their establishment was no longer on the territory of Virginia, they would no longer be held in servitude we wanted to impose. To avoid undesirable drifts, a majority of other settlers, including the Pilgrim Fathers, ...