Five Lessons America Learned from the Pilgrims
Three hundred and ninety years ago the travelers we call the Pilgrims were still sitting in a small ship that had brought them across a wide ocean. While parties were being sent out to find a good settling spot, they had to be wondering why they had made such a precarious journey and if their suffering was worth it and would it ever end.
Because of religious persecution they had left England and went to Holland where they could worship freely. When they began to lose their national identity, they embarked on one of riskiest moves known to man, a move to a total wilderness. The journey would include going into the hold of a ship, smaller than most of our basements, and rarely leave it for over two months. (Think of all the things you have done for the last two months). They would share the space with over one hundred people – no bathrooms, rare light and no fire for warmth for fear of setting the old vessel on fire. The food was barely edible, people were constantly dying, and did I mention that there were no bathrooms? And yet they didn’t lose sight of their goal, to live in a place that they could worship God their way. Which lead us to Lesson #1: Americans don’t want their Government to be involved in how they worship God.
When they realized that they were north of the area that their land charter had them going they debated about whose law would they be under, England’s or nobody’s? After much debate, they decided to come up with their own governmental plan, even if it was temporary. The basics were: that they would elect their own leaders and everyone would follow their decisions. We call it the Mayflower Compact. Sorry ladies it has nothing to do with makeup. Lesson #2: Americans want to elect their own leaders. We charge them to make the rules and we agree to follow them.
From William Bradford’s diary we know that this dedicated group constantly was asking God for direction and protection. It’s hard see how God protected them since eventually half of them died, but they felt that God had paved the way for them. Could it have been just by chance that five years before they arrived a warrior name Squanto was captured by Europeans to be sold in Spain as a slave and four years later he is released back to his homeland? Was is just coincidence that he learned to speak English very well and was willing to use his abilities and knowledge to help the race that had stolen him away? Was it a coincidence that the off course Mayflower had taken them to a land, where just the past year a French crew had been murdered, and now was almost devoid of native population because of disease? I guess all those things could have been an accident but we know the Pilgrims called it Divine Providence. Lesson #3 Americans have always believed that God had a hand in the very beginnings of our great country.
Through all the great hardships of the journey and early months of backbreaking work and the mourning of the loss of their loved ones, the settlers never lost sight of who they were. In the early fall they set a time to give thanks to God for their survival. They were even willing to share their meager provisions with their new native friends. Lesson #4 Americans believe that even through great hardship we have much to be thankful for and we should share our bounty with each other.
There is no record that the Thanksgiving ceremony continued each year, and it would be hard to do it the next couple of years. For the first three years everyone worked for the common good, all food and animals were held together. But as has been shown through history, that system rarely works. The slouches always exist and they bring down the effort of the group and the incentive to work hard disappears. The group was on the brink of disaster when the elected leader, William Bradford, declared that from that moment on everyone would reap the benefits of their own efforts, and the community began to prosper. Lesson #5 For America to continue to prosper, we all need to work hard, and the freeloaders will have to work if they want to survive.
