Mayflower Compact – The Pull Of The Land

Edward Winslow and His Friend, Massasoit

November 24, 2023November 24, 2023 Richard Barnes

Much history concerning the New England Pilgrims is relatively unknown. This is unfortunate, especially given the flagrant tergiversations of American history by those whose mission is to teach our children to hate their country.

This short post on this Thanksgiving Day, of 2023, will tell a little about Edward Winslow, who is inextricably bound not only with the Plymouth Colony but with the Wampanoag Chief, Massasoit. Although he was one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact, his name nevertheless remains relatively obscure.

Winslow was one of the best educated among the Pilgrims. He was the son of a prominent merchant in the salt industry in England; a Puritan as distinguished from a Pilgrim Separatist. However, in Holland, he became acquainted with William Brewster and Winslow himself joined the Pilgrim congregation which eventually sailed to the New World.

Winslow’s education and temperament propelled him to eminence among both the Pilgrims and the Indians. He was chosen to greet Massasoit on the chief’s first visit to the Plymouth Colony. They became immediate friends and Winslow became the primary author of the Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty that was signed on April 1, 1621. This was a notable accomplishment as the treaty remained in force for over 50 years, outlasting the lives of William Bradford, Winslow, and Massasoit.

It is the only such treaty to have been honored throughout the lives of its signatories. “It established the longest-lasting and most equitable peace between natives and immigrants in the history of what would become the United States.” Put another way, in the face of bloody conflicts between other colonists and tribes, such as the Pequot War in Connecticut, the Pilgrims had no such conflicts. A most unusual and worthy feat for which we can be grateful to Edward Winslow and Massasoit.

Winslow wrote about the Plymouth colony that it was a community “not laid upon schism, division, or separation, but upon love, peace, and holiness; yea, such love and mutual care of the Church of Leyden for the spreading of the Gospel, the welfare of each other and their posterities to succeeding generations, is seldom found on earth.”

Winslow lived what he wrote.

In 1623 word reached the colony that Massasoit was very ill, near death. Winslow, accompanied by a Pilgrim and an Indian, immediately departed on a 40-mile journey, by foot, to his friend. He did what he could, including chicken soup. “There is a wonderful relation by Winslow about going to Massasoit’s home and making chicken broth for him,” a historian writes. “It’s very tender.”

Massasoit recovered and said, “Now I see the English are my friends and love me.”

Winslow was also able to nurse back to health several other Indians who seemed to have been stricken with the same disease. As a result, Massasoit bound himself more firmly with the Pilgrims.

Winslow’s comments about the foundation of love undergirding Plymouth Colony were true. This love enabled tolerance towards those who did not subscribe to the Pilgrim tenets and, most importantly, towards the Indians whom they served and sought to help, even as they, the Pilgrims, had been helped.

Winslow proclaimed the success of the Pilgrims in England, earning the respect and admiration of Oliver Cromwell who assigned him to various diplomatic tasks, the last of which was Cromwell’s appointment of Winslow as governor of Jamaica.

However, the Lord had a different purpose. Edward Winslow took ill and died on the open seas, on his journey to Jamaica, in 1655.

Our early and colonial history is rich with truly remarkable men and women. It is critical to know that history and teach it to our children.

With that very brief background about one of the individuals on the Mayflower and his Indian friend, it is most appropriate to conclude with President Ronald Reagan’s last Thanksgiving Proclamation, given in 1988:

“In this year when we as a people enjoy the fruits of economic growth and international cooperation, let us take time both to remember the sacrifices that have made this harvest possible and the needs of those who do not fully partake of its benefits.

“The wonder of our agricultural abundance must be recalled as the work of farmers who, under the best and worst of conditions, give their all to raise food upon the land.

“The gratitude that fills our being must be tempered with compassion for the needy.

“The blessings that are ours must be understood as the gift of a loving God Whose greatest gift is healing.

“Let us join then, with the psalmist of old: O give thanks to the Lord, call on His name, Make known His deeds among the peoples!

“Sing to Him, sing praises to Him, Tell of all His wonderful works!

“Glory in His holy name; Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 24, 1988, as a National Day of thanksgiving, and I call upon the citizens of this great Nation to gather together in homes and places of worship on that day of thanks to affirm by their prayers and their gratitude the many blessings God has bestowed upon us.”

Edward Winslow (1595-1655)

Massasoit (circa 1581-circa 1661)

Signing of the Mayflower Compact; Edward Winslow is standing at center, right hand on the table, left hand holding the ink bottle.

Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty, April 1, 1621

President Ronald W. Reagan (1911-2004)

The First Thanksgiving Declaration, Governor William Bradford

November 27, 2020November 27, 2020 Richard Barnes

“Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.

“Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the daytime, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.”

William Bradford

Ye Governor of Ye Colony

That first formal declaration was three years after their arrival, when practices and habits had begun to solidify. However, the very first Thanksgiving was in 1621, most likely in November, a year after their arrival. In that year’s winter, their first, about half their company perished, including their first governor, John Carver, who died in April:

“He was buried in the best manner they could, with some vollies of shott by all that bore arms; and his wife, being weak, dyed within five or six weeks after him.”

All previous burials had been done in secret because they did not want the Indians to know how alarmingly depleted their number was becoming. This was the first burial done openly.

During that year they made a treaty with the Indians, the Wampanoag, which treaty was honored by both parties for decades, until Plymouth Colony had ceased to exist, having been folded into the Massachusetts colony.

From Bradford’s journal:

“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor [he always wrote in the third person] sent four men on fowling, that we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms. King Massasoit, with some ninety men, we entertained and feasted with for three days. They went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by goodness of God, we are so far from want.”

The words of our Lord Jesus Christ certainly apply to the Pilgrims: “Ye are the light of the world”.

Bradford seemed to sense the portentousness of their voyage, their survival, and their prosperity, when he wrote:

“Thus out of smalle beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand [Who] made all things that are; and as one small candle may light a thousands, so ye light here kindled hath shone to many, yea in some sorte to our whole nation; let ye glorious name of Jehova have all ye praise.”

The character of the Pilgrims is worthy of emulation by us all today, 400 years after their arrival.

Most of all, the attitude of gratitude. Entire families had died; many survivors had lost loved ones and friends. But they knew, they sincerely knew, to be grateful.

They honored God and God honored them.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

P.S. If you’d like to read about Squanto, please see my 2019 Thanksgiving post (Squanto).

Signing of the Mayflower Compact (see here for more on that event).

William Bradford (1590 – 1657), Governor of Plymouth Colony.

Artist rendition of the First Thanksgiving

November 11: 1918 and 1620 (Written on November 11, 2020)

November 12, 2020November 12, 2020 Richard Barnes

All the best to our veterans and their families today.

As most Americans know, or should know, this day was once known as Armistice Day, commemorating the ceasing of hostilities of World War I (“The Great War”) at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. It was renamed “Veterans Day” in the USA in 1954.

But that’s not the November 11 I’d like to address in this post.

Earlier today, as I was beginning to put these thoughts on paper, my younger daughters shared a quote by Ronald Reagan: “We are never defeated unless we give up on God.” That further reminded me of today’s topic: The Mayflower Compact, which was signed on November 11, 1620, 400 years ago today.

America’s history, including the constitutions of the 13 colonies, the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the constitutions of the states simply cannot be understood if we ignore the covenantal nature of our founding.

Although 20th century historians began to insist that ours was an “Enlightenment” founding, and by that, they meant a secular founding, the truth is otherwise, and is far more interesting and meaningful.

Some date The Enlightenment around the mid-17th century, either with Descartes’ declaration, “I think, therefore, I Am” in 1637, or Newton’s Principia Mathematica in 1687; however, the Enlightenment is mostly identified with the French philosophes and atheists such as Voltaire. Perhaps we should date it according to most French historians, somewhere between 1715 – 1789, meaning the period between the death of Louis XIV until the French Revolution.

Modern historians swoon over this period, assuring us that we inherited religious toleration, separation of church and state, not to mention our very liberties from this Age.

But “by their fruits ye shall know them”.

The fruits of the Enlightenment are most evident in the French Revolution and its progeny, including the blood soaked South American revolutions of the 19th century, the Russian Revolution of the early 20th, and various and sundry others, mostly characterized by bloodshed, tyranny, and chaos.

For more on the French Revolution see July 14 and More on July 14.

The United States owe their liberties and religious toleration and much more, not to the Enlightenment but to the Protestant Reformation. It is not for nothing that the German historian, Leopold von Ranke, wrote, “Calvin was virtually the founder of America.” American historian, George Bancroft, agreed, “He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty.”

To take only one example, the Puritan divine, Richard Baxter, wrote in 1659:

“And where his [the ruler’s] Covenants with his people limit him, he hath no power in the exempt points: e. g. if he be restrained from raising taxes without the people’s consent, if he yet command the payment of such taxes, he doth so not by Authority: for neither God nor man did ever give him Authority thereto.”

These and words such as these were very familiar to the Founders, the preachers, and the people in the American colonies for a century before 1776.

Ambrose Serle, secretary to British General Howe in New York City, wrote to the British Secretary of State in 1776 telling him that the American Revolution was ultimately a religious war. And Serle was no ordinary observer. He knew whereof he spoke. But he was one of many who made this observation. A Hessian soldier fighting for England said, “Call this war, dearest friend, by whatsoever name you may, only call it not an American Revolution, it is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion.” A later historian, John C. Miller, who specialized in America’s early history, wrote, “To the end, the Churchmen [Church of England] believed that the Revolution was a Presbyterian-Congregationalist plot.”

There are many such references, including comments from King George himself, who believed that the rebels were Presbyterians.

There is much, much more, but the above is enough to note the importance of the Mayflower Compact.

The Compact was signed by all on the Mayflower and predated the earliest date of the Renaissance by decades, and the more accepted dates, by a century. It was not an Enlightenment document but rather a most covenantal, Christian one.

In brief, the Mayflower was blown 300 miles off course by a storm and, instead of arriving in Virginia, she anchored off the coast of Massachusetts. And that was a major problem because they now were under no one’s immediate jurisdiction. Rebellion and “we’ll-do-as-we-please” began almost immediately to foment within her bowels.

We must remember that of the 102 passengers on the ship, only 41 were true Pilgrims, religious separatists. The others, whom the Pilgrims called “strangers”, were merchants, craftsmen, indentured servants, and orphaned children. This was the primary source of the rapidly rising anarchistic impulses.

The Pilgrims huddled together amongst themselves and drew up an agreement, a sacred “covenant,” making them a “civil body politic” and promising “just and equal laws.” They had already done this as a congregation of like-minded believers; however, they now had 61 persons who did not belong to their group. Hence, their political document which all signed, even the indentured servants.

This document was signed before they left the ship and quieted those “strangers” who were making “discontented and mutinous speeches.” It was designed to stop the impulse of every man or woman to do as he or she pleased, or to succumb to the spirit of every-man-for-himself.

The Pilgrims knew that for their colony to be successful, they needed folks to be law abiding and productive.

And so, on November 11, 1620, 400 years ago today, the Compact was signed.

And, in my opinion, this goes a long way to explaining why Plymouth Colony was long-lasting, remaining faithful to her Compact until 1691 when they became part of Massachusetts Bay Colony. By contrast, the famous Jamestown Colony was characterized by disastrous governments and was even abandoned in 1610, although later settled once more.

Calvin Coolidge said this about the compact, 300 years after its signing:

“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 acknowledgement 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.

“But the really wonderful thing was that they had the power and strength of character to abide by it and live by it from that day to this. Some governments are better than others. But any form of government is better than anarchy, and any attempt to tear down government is an attempt to wreck civilization.”

The first words of the Compact are: “In the name of God, Amen.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “To destroy a country, you must first cut off its roots.”

Let us commit to teaching America’s history aright to our children and grandchildren.