Editorial Staff November 23, 2011 @ 1:10 PM
4 Comments ››

Author:  John Poirier, Esq. –

The Tenth letter of John to the Philistines.

The term “Philistine” is defined in the modern vernacular as a derogatory term used to describe a person holding a vulgar set of values.  A Philistine is someone who despises or undervalues art, beauty, intellectual rigor, or spiritual values. Philistines are also said to be materialistic and to favor pop culture values unthinkingly.  The American landscape is filled with Philistines these days, and you know who you are.

The Real Story of Thanksgiving: The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early 1600’s.  The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs. A group of separatists, later known as the Pilgrims, first fled to Holland and established a community.

After about eleven years of living in exile in Holland, the Pilgrims came to the realization that they had simply traded one despotism for another.  Holland was a possession of Spain until 1609, and subject to an equally zealous spiritual authority in the Catholic church under the Spanish Inquisition.  After 1609 life in the Dutch Republic improved considerably for political and religious minorities, and Holland became a magnet for Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal, and Calvinist dissidents from England.  Nonetheless, the Dutch position was a perilous one, being beset by increasingly aggressive and  much larger states  jealous of Dutch prosperity; France on the land and England on the sea.

The decision to leave Holland was based on a number of considerations.  In the early 17^th century, Holland was overpopulated in relation to the economic situation of the day, much like England.  William Bradford spoke of “the hardness of the place and country.”  The only occupations available to English immigrants were those in low paying jobs such as the textile trades and other labor intensive work.  Some of the English who had fled to Holland exhausted their savings and “returned to the prisons of England rather than endure the hardships in Holland.”

Thus it was on August 1, 1620 that 120 pilgrims set out to the New World on two ships, the Mayflower and the smaller Speedwell.  Misfortune struck almost immediately, with the inaptly named Speedwell springing a leak after only a day at sea.  Twelve passengers from the Speedwell squeezed in with the 90 passengers already on the Mayflower, bringing the final number who left for the New World 102, with 18 staying behind.

The voyage to the New World lasted 65 days through continual heavy storms.  Although nominally intending to sail to the Jamestown colony in Virginia, it is widely suspected that the Pilgrims intended to settle well away from the Jamestown colony all along, to escape English authority for as long as possible.

Conditions on board the Mayflower were miserable in the extreme.  First of all, the ship was incredibly tiny by today’s standards.  There were only three decks on the Mayflower, a top deck, the middle, or “Tween” deck, and the lower deck.  Each deck comprised approximately 1,000 square feet.  The lower deck was filled with ship’s stores, cargo, and ballast.  The top deck was the province of the crew, being used to run and manage the ship’s rigging and sails.  For passengers, that left the Tween deck except for short jaunts up to the top deck for a breath of fresh air, huddled in a corner out of the way of the crew.  Imagine spending 65 straight days with a hundred and one other passengers in a 1,000 square foot space!  Many Pilgrim families erected crude clapboard walls to gain some measure of privacy.  The middle of the deck was occupied by a smaller sailing vessel, a shallop, which the colonists would use for exploration once they reached their destination.  This reduced the usable space on the tween deck even more.

The Mayflower had a low freeboard, and was laden down with extra cargo putting it very low in the water for its trip to the New World.  That meant the passengers spent most of their time in very wet conditions.  Like all vessels having high stems and sterns, the Mayflower was undoubtedly a “wet ship”.  Captain John Smith (not the ship’s master, by the way) wrote: “But being pestered nine weeks in this leaking, unwholesome ship, lying wet in their cabins; most of them grew very weak and weary of the sea.”

For women passengers, there was only a chamber pot for a toilet.  Male passengers had the additional option of using the crew’s head in the forecastle of the ship.  For those of you unacquainted with wooden sailing ships, the “head” on a vessel in this period consisted of a seat with a hole in it, below which were wide scuppers designed to take in sea water when the bow dropped down into a wave.  Thus these latrines would be cleaned out by sea water with the normal motion of the ship.  If you didn’t time it right, and were sitting there during an ocean swell, you would get more of a cleaning than you had bargained for!  Most Pilgrims were not prepared for rough seas and suffered injuries being thrown against the walls of the wind tossed ship.  When they weren’t seasick, they were bored.

The Pilgrims arrived off the coast of Cape Cod in early November, 1620.  Contrary to popular belief, the Mayflower did not simply dump them on Plymouth Rock and leave.  The Mayflower stayed until Spring of the next year, acting as a base of operations while the Pilgrims explored the environs of Cape Cod and selected their settlement site.  During this time, the ship’s Master, Thomas Jones, kept a log.  From the first week of November, 1620, to the first week of April, 1621, half the crew of the Mayflower died from deprivation and disease, as well as nearly half of the colonists.  When the Mayflower departed, the Pilgrims were down to 53 souls, which included 2 children born during the voyage and prior to the founding of Plymouth.  Despite these horrific setbacks, not a single passenger took Master Jones up on his offer to go back to England when the Mayflower departed April 5^th, 1621.  Then things really got bad.

The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and 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 as well. They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well.

Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, and it failed miserably.  Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.  Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as communism.  It didn’t work!  Even with a group of people as moral and righteous as the Pilgrims, it didn’t work.  They nearly starved!

What Bradford and the Pilgrims found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation.  What Bradford wrote about this social experiment is very instructive, and should be taught to our children.  If it was, we might prevent much needless suffering,  such as we’re enduring now.

Bradford wrote:  ”‘The experience that we had in this common course and condition tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God.”

Bradford continues:  “For this community 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 fit 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.”

In other words, why should you work for other people when you can’t work for yourself?  Bradford’s solution was to harness enlightened self-interest:

“Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And 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.” By the Fall of 1621, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.  Yes, they finally did have enough food to have a feast and give thanks to God.

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. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the ‘Great Puritan Migration.

Now, along the way it is true that the Pilgrims did pick up some planting tips from the local Indians, such as laying a small fish in a hole with seed to provide fertilizer in the sandy soil of the region.  But it was not the Indians who saved the Pilgrims, they saved themselves.  It was not the Indians who fed the Pilgrims, they learned to feed themselves.  They did so by following the Natural Law that God has decreed; by allowing their members to enjoy private property rights and to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, as God intended.

And that is the True Story of Thanksgiving.  Those readers who wish to read the primary source materials quoted herein are directed to this excellent site:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4107/4107-h/4107-h.htm#image-0003