“In the name of God Amen.” So it began, the Mayflower
Compact, the first contract to which the Saints and Strangers came together and
agreed upon. The year was 1620 and the Mayflower
had arrived in the new world. They could not have known it then, but those few
settlers who survived the treacherous storms as they sailed across the mighty
Atlantic in their frail little ship were founding the greatest and mightiest
nation the world would ever see. Its sheer size would one day rival and indeed
surpass the greatest empires of history, and much of its acquisitions, although
certainly not all, would be peaceful.
At that first “Thanksgiving,” there were three types of
people: The Saints, or the Pilgrims, as we know them, who had fled England and
its religious oppression. There were the Strangers, the sailors, the
adventurers and other, rough and tumble types of folks that had joined the
party, some of them more upright and steady than others of their number.
And of course there were the “Savages.” Of course, they
weren’t all savages, and quite a few of them were peaceful, but in their war
paint, lack of clothing, and strange tongue, to the bewildered and storm tossed
Englishmen they must have seemed savage indeed in their primitive and
uncivilized way.
Already, four hundred years ago, the themes and patterns that
would come to be seen as distinctly American were already forming. There was a
belief in God, and a belief that one should be free to worship in his or her
own way. That was the ultimate reason that the Mayflower came to the new world at all, and indeed it was to God
that the thanks was being given in the first place. That belief in a Divine
Being would later be laid down further in the founding document of the nation
in the Declaration, and the freedom to believe in Him or not was cemented in
the Constitution. It has never left us, expanding in later years to the pledge
of allegiance and the very currency with which we trade.
The second thing that showed itself early as our first
founding fathers took their baby steps away from mother England was that of a
fierce independence. Indeed, the very Mayflower Compact was created because
many of the Strangers wanted to run into the woods and do their own thing.
These were hardy folk, they’d travelled three thousand miles through uncharted
waters to an unmapped land just to be free. It speaks of a people who later go
against the mightiest nation in the world in war, and win, because that nation
had dared to step on their liberty.
There was also the “Savages” acceptance of immigrants. It
wasn’t necessarily out of the goodness of their hearts, many historians tell
us, as the Indians were simply hoping to gain a new ally in the tribal warfare
of the day, yet still, the Pilgrims were refugees, and the Indians did let them
come, whatever the reason.
And then there was unity. Three groups of people, who for the
most part worshiped in three different ways and spoke different languages, from
different places, with different goals and ideas, were able to come together
without warring with one another, to talk over their differences. That peace
would last for over fifty years, until a true savage, “King Phillip,” an Indian
chief, would break it.
Today, we are many millions of people, with scores of
languages, scores of religious affiliations, and ideas as to how we should
govern ourselves too many too count. And yet, as the other motto on our
currency states, we are “out of many one.” We have come here not to be
Englishmen or Saints or Strangers or Savages, we have come to be Americans.
There are plenty of things to divide us, but we shouldn’t bother being such
small people as to focus on those. We have one language, one flag, one currency
and one people. The Pilgrims came here looking for unity amongst themselves and
peace with the outside world. It’s a goal worth fighting for, and one we can be
thankful they gave to us.
Andrew C. Abbott
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