Plymouth Rock: America's First Experiment with Socialism

(Joseph Farah) – There are many myths and misconceptions surrounding the people responsible for the American Thanksgiving tradition. Contrary to popular opinion, the Pilgrims didn’t wear buckles on their shoes or hats. They weren’t teetotalers, either. They smoked tobacco and drank beer. And, most importantly, their first harvest festival and subsequent “thanksgivings” weren’t held to thank the local natives for saving their lives.

Do you know there are public schools in America today actually teaching that? Some textbooks, in their discomfort with open discussions of Christianity, say as much. I dare suggest most parents today know little more about this history than their children.

Yet, there is no way to divorce the spiritual from the celebration of Thanksgiving – at least not the way the Pilgrims envisioned it, a tradition dating back to the ancient Hebrews and their feasts of Succoth and Passover.

The Pilgrims came to America for one reason – to form a separate community in which they could worship God as they saw fit. They had fled England because King James I was persecuting those who did not recognize the Church of England’s absolute civil and spiritual authority.

On the two-month journey of 1620, William Bradford and the other elders wrote an extraordinary charter – the Mayflower Compact. Why was it extraordinary? Because it established just and equal laws for all members of their new community – believers and non-believers alike. Where did they get such revolutionary ideas? From the Bible, of course.

When the Pilgrims landed in the New World, they found a cold, rocky, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, Bradford wrote. No houses to shelter them. No inns where they could refresh themselves. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims died of sickness or exposure –including Bradford’s wife. Though life improved for the Pilgrims when spring came, they did not really prosper. Why? Once again, the textbooks don’t tell the story, but Bradford’s own journal does. The reason they didn’t succeed initially is because they were practicing an early form of socialism.

The original contract the Pilgrims had with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store. Each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community. Bradford, as governor, recognized the inherent problem with this collectivist system.

“The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years … that by taking away property, and bringing community into common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,” Bradford wrote. “For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fir for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense … that was thought injustice.”

What a surprise! Even back then people did not want to work without incentive. Bradford decided to assign a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of free enterprise. What was the result?

“This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.”

As a result, the Pilgrims soon found they had more food than they could eat themselves. They set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London much faster than expected. The success of the Plymouth colony thus attracted more Europeans and set off what we call the “Great Puritan Migration.”

But it wasn’t just an economic system that allowed the Pilgrims to prosper. It was their devotion to God and His laws. And that’s what Thanksgiving is really all about. The Pilgrims recognized that everything we have is a gift from God – even our sorrows. Their Thanksgiving tradition was established to honor God and thank Him for His blessings and His grace.

Today we continue that tradition in my home – and I hope in yours. God bless you, God bless America, and Happy Thanksgiving.

(Mr. Farah is publisher of WorldNetDaily.com. This column was originally published on November 27, 2003)

The Puritains were English Calvanists who derived their name from a desire to “purify” the English church of “popery,” rejecting all doctrine and cermonies not justified by their interpretation of the Scriptures. One of the principal differences among the various Puritain sects was their view on church organization. In the 1570s, the Separatists or Brownists sects advocated separation from the Church of England and the formation of churches by compact or covenant among the church members. This practice stemmed from the belief that each man had direct communication with and responsibility to God. Calvin in his “Institutes” had asserted that the church came into existence by “common consent” and Robert Browne taught that two believers could come together and form a church on no other authority than the compact that brought it into existence.

The Virginia Company of Plymouth was chartered together with the Virginia Company of London, although they were separate corporations and were to operate in the area of separate land grants. The contract offered to the Pilgrims, a Separatist group, by the Virginia Company of Plymouth company assumed a communal system for the first seven years, after which the communal property of the colony would be equally divided and distributed. The Pilgrims were displeased with these terms and refused to sign the contract. They proceeded to sail anyway, landing outside the domains of that company, Essentially, this meant that they were, without any political authority. Prior to landing on Novemer 11, 1620, the men on board the “Mayflower” employed the concept of the covenant or compact to provide for the basis of their civil government:

“IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN

“We whose names are under-written, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glorie of God, and advancemente of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and countrie, a voyage to plant the first colonie in the Northern parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solomnly and mutualy in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by vertue hereof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just and equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the generall good of the Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names.....”

When the Pilgrims landed outside the domain of the Virginia Company, forty noblemen and gentlemen in 1621 obtained a large grant of patent from King James derived out of the Virginia patent, and were constituted as the “The Council established at Plymouth in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England in America” with jurisdiction over the territory from 40-48 degrees north latitutde, sea-to-sea. The territory granted was to be beholden of the crown, as of the royal manor of East Greenwich, in Kent county, in free and common soccage, and not in capite, nor by knight service. The President and Council for New England were authorized by their royal charter “to make, ordain and establish all manner of orders, laws, directions, instructions, forms and ceremonies of government and magistracy, fit and necessary for and concerning the government of the said colony and plantation.” Delegated the authority to acquire and dispose of land, the Council for New England would serve primarily as a land-granting agency to would-be colonial promoters.

The contract issued to the Pilgrims by the Council June 1, 1621, authorized them “to establish such Lawes and ordynaunces as are for their better government, and the same by such Officer or Officers as they shall by most voices elect and choose to put in execution.” The new contract was brought over by their agent Robert Cushman and was signed in November 1621, a year after the “Mayflower” had landed.

In 1626, the colonists signed a written agreement among themselves to form a joint-stock corporation, corporately holding the combined assests, profits and debts of the colony. The corporate holdings were assigned to Isaack Allerton as agent to pledge them as bonds or security on annual payment of notes to the Council for New England to obtain goods and necessities for the new colony on credit to be repayed through commodities produced such as fur, dried fish and corn. A full annual accounting of debts and payments would be made. (The colony’s debts were finaly paid off in 1642.)

Within the corporation, single free men had a single share and every father of a household had as many shares as there were people in his family. Ownership of the cattle was proportionatly divided -so at the time one cow was “owned” by six persons or shares. 20 acres of arriable land, with five acres abutting a watercourse, was alloted to each share. The remaining land was to be held communally and each, according to his share in cattle, could mow the grass.

Finaly, in 1629, the Council for New England granted a patent to the Plymouth Colony, defining its territorial limits and confirming the Kennebec area. It is probable that no royal charter was ever granted the colony. By 1635, the Council for New England surrendered their own patent back to the crown.

Sources:
. (Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States; With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before Adoption of the Constitution, Volume I, Chapter III, Boston: Hilliard, Gray & Co.; Cambridge: Brown, Shattuck, and Co.; 1833.)
. Editor William T. Davis’ Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation 1606-1646, Barnes & Noble, Inc., c1964 at 107.

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