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The Mayflower Compact: Celebrating Four Hundred Years of Influence on U.S

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The Mayflower Compact: Celebrating Four Hundred Years of Influence on U.S THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT: CELEBRATING FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF INFLUENCE ON U.S. DEMOCRACY JULIA L. ERNST* The Mayflower Compact In the Name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc. Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Col- ony in Northern Parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutu- ally in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine our- selves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Con- stitutions 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. In witness whereof we have hereunder sub- scribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 1620.1 *†Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs and Associate Professor, University of North Dakota School of Law. This article is dedicated to my mother, Janet Lee (Mohr) Ernst, a proud descendant of Mayflower passenger John Billington and a constant source of inspiration, strength, and love throughout my life. It is also dedicated to my father, the late Judge John Richard Ernst, who proclaimed on countless occasions that the greatest blessing of his life was his wife, my mother. I am very grateful for invaluable assistance from Burtness Scholar Research Assistants Lauren Kauffman and Kari Peterson, as well as UND School of Law Thormodsgard Law Library Head of Faculty Services Anne Mostad Jensen. I also thank Dean Michael McGinniss, Professor Emeritus Patti Alleva, Anne, and my mother for their thoughtful comments on drafts of this article, in addition to the NDLR editors and members for their excellent work on this piece. 1.WILLIAM BRADFORD, OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION 1620-1647 83-84 (Random House ed. 1981) (modern English spelling). 2 NORTH DAKOTA LAW REVIEW [VOL. 95:1 I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 3 II. HISTORICAL CONTEXT LEADING UP TO THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT ......................................................................................... 4 A. DEMOCRATIC PRECURSORS TO THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT IN AND AROUND EUROPE ................................................................. 5 B. CONTEXT IN THE AMERICAS PRECEDING THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT ................................................................................... 13 III. THE PILGRIMS, THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT, AND PLYMOUTH COLONY .................................................................. 21 A. THE JOURNEY OF THE PILGRIMS ............................................... 21 B. THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT’S UNIFICATION OF THE SAINTS AND STRANGERS ........................................................................ 26 C. THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT: WHAT IT DID AND DID NOT DO 30 D. THE ASCENT AND ABSORPTION OF PLYMOUTH COLONY ......... 42 1. The Early Years ................................................................... 42 2. The Pilgrim Code of Law .................................................... 57 3. Plymouth Colony’s Remaining Decades ............................. 64 IV. THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT’S ENDURING LEGACY ......... 68 A. ESTABLISHMENT OF OTHER COLONIES ..................................... 69 1. Massachusetts ...................................................................... 70 2. Connecticut .......................................................................... 77 3. Rhode Island ........................................................................ 78 4. Pennsylvania ........................................................................ 80 B. CONTINUED DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL THOUGHT IN EUROPE ................................................................ 81 C. THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT’S INFLUENCE ON THE REVOLUTIONARIES .................................................................... 88 1. Declaration of Independence ............................................... 95 2. State Constitutions ............................................................... 98 3. Articles of Confederation ................................................... 102 4. U.S. Constitution ............................................................... 106 2020] THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT 3 D. POST-REVOLUTION SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT ................................................................................. 121 V. THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT’S LESSONS FOR TODAY .... 131 I. INTRODUCTION2 The year 2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower Compact, signed by the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower anchored just offshore from the land that would become Plymouth Colony. This manuscript would become the historical precedent for future seminal documents in the formation of the American governmental system, including the Fundamental Orders of Con- necticut, the U.S. Articles of Confederation, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Northwest Ordinance, and particularly the U.S. Constitution. As the nation commemorates the quadricentennial of the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620, this paper explores the influence the Mayflower Compact has had on the evolution of democracy in the United States over the past four centu- ries, tracing both the document’s precursors and its legacy.3 As many leaders in our country historically and today have endeavored to increase civic virtue and to foster broader participation in the democratic process,4 this article calls for a greater emphasis in law schools and other educational institutions on the Mayflower Compact and other additional formative documents that have helped shape our constitutional establishment of government. Part II of this article sets the stage of the historical context leading up to the Mayflower Compact by examining the democratic precursors to this doc- ument in and around Europe, as well as the situation in the Americas preced- ing the Pilgrims. In the next section, Part III focuses on the Pilgrims, the Mayflower Compact, and Plymouth Colony. This part of the paper follows the path of the Pilgrims from England to Holland in the early 1600s and then 2. Internal citations have been omitted throughout the quotations in this article unless other- wise indicated. 3. As suggested in the introduction, this article is not intended to offer a revolutionary new theory about the Mayflower Compact. Instead, it provides a contextual examination of the May- flower Compact for audiences interested in an overview of its place in the development of American democracy. For an insightful exploration of the Mayflower Compact, see Mark L. Sargent, The Conservative Covenant: The Rise of the Mayflower Compact in American Myth, 61 THE NEW ENGLAND Q. 233, 233-51 (1988). 4. See, e.g., THE SELECTED WRITINGS OF JOHN AND JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 49 (Adrienne Koch & William Peden eds., 1946) (John Adams wrote “It is the form of government which gives decisive color to the manners of the people, more than any other thing. Under a well-regulated commonwealth, the people must be wise, virtuous, and cannot be otherwise . As politics there- fore is the science of human happiness, and human happiness is clearly best promoted by virtue, what thorough politician can hesitate who has a new government to build whether to prefer a com- monwealth or a monarchy?”). 4 NORTH DAKOTA LAW REVIEW [VOL. 95:1 on to the New World in 1620. After highlighting the events leading up to the formation of the Mayflower Compact, which the voyagers adopted to unify the members of the religious community along with the others travelling with them, this section then explores the text and meaning of this important agree- ment. Next, this section investigates the rise of Plymouth Colony and its ul- timate absorption into the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. Part IV of the article discusses the Mayflower Compact’s enduring legacy, surveying the establishment of other colonies, the continued progress of democratic politi- cal thought in Europe, the Mayflower Compact’s impact on the Revolution- aries, and its post-Revolution significance. The article concludes in Part V with a brief note about the Mayflower Compact’s lessons for the present day. II. HISTORICAL CONTEXT LEADING UP TO THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT In forming an agreement that provides for the consent of the governed, lauds equality and justice, and establishes a government whose purpose is the general good of everyone in the community no matter their station in life, the Mayflower Compact’s uniting of the travelers aboard the eponymous ship may appear to be somewhat of a revolutionary action when it was penned four centuries ago. However, these ideas were not novel. Indeed, political and theological concepts had begun to question absolute political and ecclesias- tical authority, to promote the notion of participatory governance, and to as- sert that the purpose of government is to advance the good of the people for quite some time beforehand, as described below. The concept of a society based upon a “social contract” or “covenant” among the members of the society emerged at least
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