by Jerry Curtis

Created on: November 21, 2010

The Mayflower Compact was an agreement signed by 41 male colonists (37 Pilgrims and 4 non-Pilgrims).  It was signed on November 21, 1620, on the ship Mayflower that transported over 100 passengers from Southampton, England, and dropped anchor in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The real significance of the Mayflower Compact was in its stunning simplicity. It was a covenant between free people to (in the words of the agreement): “combine our selves together into a civil body politic… and by virtue hereof to enact … just and equal laws, …, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due ... obedience.”  In short, the Pilgrim settlers agreed to pass just laws and to abide by them.

The group decided that a compact would be a sensible idea, since they were outside the jurisdiction of the British Crown. Their original destination was the mouth of the Hudson River, but because of unfavorable winds and possibly bad navigation on the part of a sulky, sullen ship’s captain, the group saw a need to set up the rule of law and bring the non-Pilgrims in their group under control. The Pilgrims were well aware that their predecessors not 20 years before in the early Virginia colonies were hampered by near anarchy from the beginning because they had no governing agreement and were at the mercy of arbitrary decisions by incompetent royally appointed leaders.

The Compact was the first document that formed a basis of self-government in the New World. Its allusion to the “general good of the Colony” was strikingly similar to the not-yet-written Preamble to the United States Constitution “to promote the general welfare.” In fact, John Adams frequently referred to the Mayflower Compact as one of the guiding documents of our Constitution.

The Mayflower Compact was also significant in that it had a religious underpinning that would guide the Pilgrims for generations. The Pilgrims had a direct and simple view of their relationship with each other in a covenant with community, church congregation and their Creator. Just as they had already made a covenant (or agreement) on the value of work, helping their neighbors and behavior that was pleasing to God, their compact at the beginning of their difficult years in the New World was an outgrowth of an enduring philosophy.  A covenant to pass just laws and to obey them was, to the Pilgrims, as important as their covenant with God.

The Mayflower Compact, then, was the beginning of the Pilgrim experience in the New World. The Pilgrims agreed that just laws and their obedience were the basis of a successful life in harmony with each other and their Creator. It ranks in importance along with our Declaration and Independence and Constitution as an important statement of the importance of passing and obeying just laws for the common good.  The Mayflower Compact planted the seed of Enlightenment thinking that people, not kings, should pass the laws that governed them justly.

Learn more about this author, Jerry Curtis.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.