What makes the mayflower compact important

The agreement also drew on the secular tradition of the social contract , the idea of covenants between men themselves, which went back to ancient times, but would later be made more famous by philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Soon after signing it, they elected John Carver as the first governor of the new colony, which they called Plymouth Plantation. In the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims and strangers were pledging their loyalty to laws they would make themselves. The signatures of colonists who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower, on the Mayflower Compact, the first constitution written in America.

The Mayflower Compact was clearly a religious document, in that it held that the people derived their right of self-government from God. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. The Pilgrims lived on the ship for a few more months, rowing ashore to build houses during the day, and returning to the ship at night. Many people began to get sick from the cold and the wet; after all, it was December! Finally, in March , there were enough houses that everyone could live on land. After a long, hard voyage, and an even harder winter, Mayflower left Plymouth to return to England on April 5, Traveling on the ocean years ago was a very different experience than it is today.

There were no computers, televisions, air conditioners, fancy meals or swimming pools. In the s, most ships were merchant ships. They were made for carrying cargo, like barrels of food or cloth, large pieces of wood, and casks of wine, from one place to another to be sold. Before Mayflower sailed to New England, it had been sailing around Europe carrying wine and cloth. This cargo was probably stored in the lower decks of the ship in one large, open storage area.

There were no windows on this deck because windows might let in seawater that would ruin the cargo. A little water would leak in anyway, though, so this area was always cold, damp and dark.

The storage decks had very low ceilings. The ship had low-ceilinged decks to make it safer and to save space for the decks where the sailors lived. A ship that was too tall might tip over or sink. The crew sailors and officers of the ship lived on the upper decks.

In , there were about crewmembers on Mayflower. The Master , in charge of sailing the ship, was Christopher Jones. He probably had his quarters , or living space, at the stern the back of the ship. This was the driest and most comfortable area on the ship. The common sailors , or regular workers, had their quarters at the front of the ship, or bow , in a room called the forecastle. Of the passengers on the Mayflower , there were 50 men, 19 women and 33 young adults and children.

Just 41 were true Pilgrims, religious separatists seeking freedom from the Church of England. Seeking the right to worship as they wished, the Pilgrims had signed a contract with the Virginia Company to settle on land near the Hudson River, which was then part of northern Virginia. The Virginia Company was a trading company chartered by King James I with the goal of colonizing parts of the eastern coast of the New World. But when the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts instead of Virginia, discord began before the colonists even left the ship.

The strangers argued the Virginia Company contract was void. The defiant strangers refused to recognize any rules since there was no official government over them. Pilgrim leaders wanted to quell the rebellion before it took hold. After all, establishing a New World colony would be difficult enough without dissent in the ranks. The Pilgrims knew they needed as many productive, law-abiding souls as possible to make the colony successful. With that in mind, they set out to create a temporary set of laws for ruling themselves as per majority agreement.

One now-famous colonist who signed the Mayflower Compact was Myles Standish. He was an English military officer hired by the Pilgrims to accompany them to the New World to serve as military leader for the colony.

Standish played an important role in enforcing the new laws and protecting colonists against unfriendly Native Americans. No one knows exactly what happened to the original Mayflower Compact. The Mayflower Compact created laws for Mayflower Pilgrims and non-Pilgrims alike for the good of their new colony. It was a short document which established that:. Once the colonists agreed to work together, the hard work of starting the colony began. They elected John Carver governor on November 21, Carver had helped secure financing for the Mayflower expedition and served in a leadership role during the voyage to America.

Search parties then went ashore to find an ideal place to settle. They decided on Plymouth, where the colonists endured a brutal winter. Ravaged by starvation, disease and lack of shelter, more than half of the colonists died, yet Plymouth Colony survived. John Carver survived the hard winter of but died in April , and the colonists chose William Bradford to replace him.