Mayflower Compact
Religion and the Mayflower Contract

Some of the very first settlers to the United States were escaping religious persecution in Europe, but that in no way changed their mind about their connection between their religion and how they would later govern themselves. The Puritan settlers came to the New World with ideas of starting a new colony, with religion and governance intertwined. As they signed the Mayflower Contract, they believed they would be able to continue living in this manner; yet as the history of the early United States progressed, it was clear that there would be a demand for a wall of separation between Church and State that would protect religious freedom but also disconnect religious doctrines to legal doctrines.

The Puritans saw their religious and secular devotion as one in the same. When they had the opportunity to leave the religious persecution back home in England, they dreamed of…...

Mayflower Compact/Declaration of Indepence
While remembering Pilgrims during the latter part of the 18th century- even before the Revolution leading to the formation of the country, and the establishing of the "Old Colony Club," the starting of the celebrations of "Forefathers' Day," showed clear signals as to how from the formation of the official nation, nationalistic tendencies had used the past for the purpose of the current self- justification. Among these signals, one may take the example of Plymouth Colony, which is the first Puritan settlement and established by English Separatist Puritans in December 1620. These Pilgrims were seeking religious freedom, combined with a better life, and left England for that purpose. They had first gone to Holland, and then left England from the port of Plymouth in England on September 16th, in 1620 within a ship named the Mayflower. There was a voyage of 65 days for the 102 passengers.…...

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Bibliography

Hall, Verna M. And Slater, Rosalie J. The Bible and the Constitution of the United States of America. San Francisco, Ca. 1983, p.15

Winthrop, John. A Model of Christian Charity, in The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry, Perry Miller, ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1956), pp. 79-84.

Caldwell, Patricia. The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expansion. New York: Cambridge UP, 1983, pp. 14-16

" Hence, the history of the rock has been distorted, Bush continues; the rock has been used to raise the public consciousness about great American ideas, "social movements, and political and religious trends; Plymouth Rock has been made to serve them all." Plymouth Rock seems "less a monument to the Pilgrims' First Landing than to America's relentless pursuit of a usable past..." Bush quotes again from Sahlins. Then the author adds, "e all want a piece of the Rock."
No matter that Plymouth Rock has perhaps been used at various times as a symbol of America's past; what is important is not the rock (or the fact that it has been chipped away), but rather what is vitally important is Bradford's remarkable historical journal, and the Mayflower Compact itself. America, the symbol known throughout the world for freedom of expression and religious choice, is indeed embodied permanently in those documents.

orks Cited

Bradford,…...

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Works Cited

Bradford, William. "From of Plymouth Plantation." The Norton Anthology of American

Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 156-197.

Bush, Sargent. "America's Origin Myth: Remembering Plymouth Rock." American

Literary History 12.4 (2000): 745-756.

English Colonies
Many Europeans viewed America as the New World. To them this was a world full of new expectations, opportunities and, for others, the chance of a new beginning. The success, or failure, of the early settlers was largely dependant on the motives and expectations that they brought with them, but also on the way in which they dealt with the problems awaiting them in their new land. Just as with the Spanish settlers of the 16th Century, the inhabitants of the first permanent English colonies, at Jamestown in Virginia and Plymouth in New England, came to America with differing motives and an individual set of expectations. Records appear to suggest, however, that in pursuit of their opportunities, the colony at Jamestown adopted an approach that was similar to that of the Spanish, unlike their counterparts in Plymouth.

Those who traveled to America did so for a wide variety of…...

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Bibliography

Ayers, Edward. American Passages: A History of the United States. London:

Harcourt Brace College, 1999.

Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. New York: McGraw Hill, 1993.

Virtual Jamestown. Jefferson Village. 25th September 2002  http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/ .

history of the native American Indians is a long and colorful one. The first Indians arrived on the North American continent subsequent to the end of the Ice Age approximately 15,000 years ago. These early Indians arrived from Siberia as they passed through Alaska and gradually settled throughout what is now the United States. These early arriving Indians were hunter-gatherers and, as a result, they traveled freely across the vast North American continent and by 8,000 years ago had spread as far east as the eastern seaboard.
As indicated, the early Indians were hunter-gatherers and many of the tribes remained such until the early 1900's but a select few tribes began farming. The Indian tribes electing such life style were centered in present day Mexico City and by the time that this area began to be explored and settled by Europeans the farming life-style of these Indian tribes had been…...

unified cultural need to establish their dominance in another land is the most important reasons for the foothold established by the English and the Spanish in the New orld. It is true that a plethora of different races, ethnic groups, nationalities, and cultures arrived on the North American soil prior to 1776, the year that America began its process of embarking upon its independence, of officially becoming the independent country of United States of America.
This begs the question of why did the Spanish (and Spanish Americans) and later primarily the English (and English Americans) become the dominant ethnic groups in the New orld, and not the other nations that established settlements, for instance, perchance, the Dutch?

This paper will argue that the predominant historical evidence, as discussed in The Ethnic Dimension in American History and Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History as well as American Mosaic suggests that…...

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Works Cited

Class Notes and Discussion

Gierde, J Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History. New York:

Houghton Mifflin College Edition, 1998.

The Ethnic Dimension in American History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.

Articles of Confederation: The Articles of Confederation were approved in November, 1777 and were the basic format for what would become the Constitution and Bill of ights for the United States. There were, of course, deficiencies in the document, this was a new experiment and getting the delegates to agree in kind to pass any sort of document was challenging at best. The Articles did allow a semblance of unity, the further impetus to remain at war with the British, and the conclusion that there would be some sort of Federal government. The Articles, however, failed to require individual States to help fund the Federal (National) government, a template for an Executive and National Judicial Branch, or the issuance of paper money and a central banking system. In essence, the largest failure was the Articles' inability to allow a Federal government to regulate commerce, tax, or impose laws upon the…...

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REFERENCES and WORKS CONSULTED

Amar, a. (2005). America's Constitution: A Biography. New York: Random House.

Bailyn, B., ed. (1993). The Debate on the Constitution. Library of America Press.

Beeman, R. (2009). Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution.

Random House.