Reasons For The Compact
The Mayflower was originally bound for the Colony of Virginia, financed by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London. Storms forced the landing to be at the hook of Cape Cod in what is now Massachusetts. This inspired the passengers to proclaim that since the settlement would not be made in the agreed upon Virginia territory, they "would use their own liberty; for none had power to command them...." To prevent this, many of the other colonists chose to establish a government. The Mayflower Compact was based simultaneously upon a majoritarian model (even though the signers were not in the majority) and the settlers' allegiance to the king. It was in essence a social contract in which the settlers consented to follow the compact's rules and regulations for the sake of survival.
In November 1620, the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, named after the major port city in Devon, England from which the Mayflower sailed. The settlers named their settlement "Plimoth" or "Plimouth", old English spellings of the name.
Read more about this topic: Mayflower Compact
Famous quotes containing the words reasons for, reasons and/or compact:
“Could truth perhaps be a woman who has reasons for not permitting her reasons to be seen? Could her name perhaps be—to speak Greek—Baubo?... Oh, those Greeks! They understood how to live: to do that it is necessary to stop bravely at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore the appearance, to believe in forms, in tones, in words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial—out of profundity!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“The Puritans, to keep the remembrance of their unity one with another, and of their peaceful compact with the Indians, named their forest settlement CONCORD.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)