1620: The Mayflower Compact and America’s Founding

The museum hosted a panel discussion on the 1620 Mayflower Compact — the shortest American political document of enduring significance. With these few words, however, the Pilgrims sowed the seeds of liberty and self-government that made their small New England settlement a cradle of American democracy. This event will explore the idea that these seventeenth-century Pilgrims were the true forerunners of America’s Founders and examine the Compact as a blueprint used to frame this nation's founding principles as embedded in the US Constitution.