1620 vs. 1619: Why the Mayflower Compact is America’s Real Founding Date

As we, as a country, celebrate our 250th birthday this year, we also celebrate the 406th anniversary of the Mayflower Compact, originally signed aboard the Mayflower on November 21, 1620, before the passengers disembarked to begin their new settlement, New Plymouth, in what is now Massachusetts.

It was originally called “Agreement Between the Settlers at New Plymouth.”  This was the first attempt at self-government in the English-speaking New World, and it was done by Pilgrims who were refugees from severe religious persecution under King James I in England.

These were freeborn Englishmen who arrived while escaping religious persecution, and they set up self-government in the Western World.  These refugees from religious persecution set out consciously to have what President Abraham Lincoln would later call “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  This is a far better founding date for the experiment in self-government that became America than the preposterous New York Times’ “1619 Project” date.

These were freeborn Englishmen who arrived in the New World seeking to escape religious persecution and set up self-government, a government in which they elected their own representatives and were responsible to each other.  This is our priceless heritage of self-government and freedom of religion.

I suspect that those Pilgrims who had braved the North Atlantic in the middle of the stormy gale season to arrive on shores they had never seen before and begin to carve out a new nation on a new continent would say to us, the recipients of this priceless heritage, “Embrace this freedom, exercise it, and zealously protect it!”

And when the government tells you to “cease and desist,” reply, “We are Americans!  We are free men who will worship or not worship how we please.”

When the Pilgrims arrived on the shores of what is now Massachusetts, some passengers who were not religious said they would not abide by others’ authority once they landed.  So, before they disembarked, the Pilgrims drafted and signed the Mayflower Compact, and all the adult males aboard the Mayflower agreed to abide by the laws enacted under the Compact. The Pilgrims who composed and signed this document were Separatists in England, which meant they had already jettisoned a thousand-year unity of church and state in Western civilization.  They believed the church was a visible, separate body of saints, a local congregation of those who had professed belief in Jesus as their Savior, as opposed to the medieval parish church concept that had dominated Europe.  So, the Mayflower Compact inaugurated a secular, civic government, which protected religious freedom far more than the parish church concept.

There is a direct line of descent from the Mayflower Compact to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.  The Mayflower Compact is indeed the American Magna Carta.  Future President Calvin Coolidge, while he was governor of Massachusetts, made the following statement about the Mayflower Compact:

“The compact which they signed was an event of the greatest importance.  It was the foundation of liberty based on law and order, and that tradition has been steadily upheld.  They drew up a form of government which has been designated as the first real constitution of modern times.  It was democratic, an acknowledgment of liberty under law and order and the giving to each person the right to participate in the government, while they promised to be obedient to the laws.”

As we celebrate our 250th birthday, let us always remember that it was the rich tradition our forefathers inherited that enabled them to declare their “independence” as “freeborn Englishmen.”

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel