Mayflower compact

American  

noun

1. an agreement to establish a government, entered into by the Pilgrims in the cabin of the Mayflower on November 11, 1620.

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Mayflower Compact Cultural  

1. An agreement reached by the Pilgrims on the ship the Mayflower in 1620, just before they landed at Plymouth Rock. The Mayflower Compact bound them to live in a civil society according to their own laws. It remained the fundamental law of their colony of Plymouth until the colony was absorbed into Massachusetts in the late seventeenth century.

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The Mayflower Compact was the first written constitution in North America.

Example Sentences

They were replaced with images inspired by the Mayflower Compact, the Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address.

From The Wall Street Journal

The Mayflower Compact quarter includes a woman on the front.

From The Wall Street Journal

The law also “authorizes” — but does not require — the display of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance in K-12 public schools.

From Seattle Times

The show acknowledges certain uncomfortable facts: that European newcomers supplanted native inhabitants, and that the Mayflower Compact was written by and for “adult Christian males.”

From Washington Post

So while the Johnsons have had their children read the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims’ charter for their new society that would honor the glory of God and the “advancement of the Christian faith,” the family also has traveled to Charleston, S.C., to study the history of slavery and had made repeated trips to Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia, where two major Civil War battles were fought and not far from where they now live.

From Washington Post