Who Said What About Mayflower Pilgrims
Historians and Writers Evaluate Plymouth Colony Founders
Oct 1, 2009
John Quincy Adams in 1802
The sixth United States president felt that both King James and the Mayflower pilgrims had no idea of the impact their ideas and actions would spawn. They were, he said, unaware “that they were laying the foundations of a power, and that he was sowing the seeds of a spirit, which in less than two hundred years would stagger the throne of his descendants, and shake his united kingdoms to the centre."
Felicia (Browne) Hemans in 1808
British poet Felicia Hemans paid tribute to the Mayflower pilgrims in a poem often taught to American school children. The last two stanzas are:
"Amidst the storm they sang
And the stars heard, and the sea
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
to the anthem of the free.
The ocean eagle soared
From his nest by the white wave’s foam,
And the rocking pines of the forest roared,
This was their welcome home.
What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels from the mine?
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith’s pure shrine.
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil which first they trod:
They have left un-stained what there they found,
Freedom to worship God."
Daniel Webster in 1820
American statesman and renowned orator Daniel Webster lauded the “Pilgrim Fathers” in a speech delivered at Plymouth Rock on the 200th anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival. Noting how much the pilgrims suffered and worked, encountering the dangerous ocean, Indian violence, disease, and famine, Webster urged Americans to transmit to future generations “the great inheritance unimpaired.”
He asked that we prove our worthiness “in our estimate of public principles and private virtue, in our veneration of religion and piety, in our devotion to civil and religious liberty, in our regard to whatever advances human knowledge, or improves human happiness…”
Alexis De Tocqueville in 1835
French philosopher and political historian Alexis De Tocqueville visited America in 1835. At Plymouth Rock, he made this observation:
"This Rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union. Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic."
De Toqueville’s most famous work, the two-volume Democracy in America, was partially based on his 1835 travels.
Samuel Eliot Morison
20th century historian Samuel Eliot Morison succinctly summarized the Puritans this way: “ .. a simple people, inspired by an ardent faith in God, a dauntless courage in danger, a boundless resourcefulness in the face of difficulties, an impregnable fortitude in adversity: thus they have in some measure become the spiritual ancestors of all Americans."
These and other writers from a variety of disciplines frequently point to the Mayflower pilgrims as the catalyst which formed the best traits of the American nation’s continued quest for freedom in its many dimensions.
Companion articles discuss the Mayflower Compact and its Pilgrim signers.
Sources:
Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, MA
Commager, Henry S., Leuchtenberg, William E., and Morison, Samuel E., A Concise History of the American Republic (New York: 1976)
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