On November 21 , 1620, before the English ship Mayflower arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a document known as the Mayflower Compact was signed. In the region that is now the United States of America, it was the first constitution to be written and adopted.
The Mayflower was guided toward Cape Cod instead of its intended target, which was the area around the Hudson River, due to choppy seas and storms. The passengers were no longer subject to the charter that the Virginia Company had granted them in England due to the change in route. The English Separatists (the Pilgrims) and the other travelers clashed in this legally ambiguous situation, with some of the latter threatening to break away and start over on their own.
Prior to landing, Pilgrim leaders, including William Bradford and William Brewster, established the Mayflower Compact to settle dispute and maintain unity. The brief (about 200 words) declaration committed its signers to abide by any laws and rules eventually formed "for the public interest of the colony" and united them into a body politic for the purpose of founding a government. The Mayflower's 102 passengers, 41 of whom were adult males, all signed the agreement when the ship was anchored in Provincetown harbor. When John Carver, who had assisted in planning the expedition, was appointed as the colony's governor, it promptly asserted its authority.
The Mayflower Compact was an adaptation of a Puritan religious covenant to a civil context rather than a constitution. The declaration didn't resolve the issue of the colonists' dubious legal rights to the area they settled because it was only a transitory measure accepted by them. (The Council for New England eventually granted a patent in June 1621.) However, the Mayflower Compact came to serve as the cornerstone of Plymouth's governance and was upheld until 1691, when the colony was incorporated into the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Although the Pilgrim founders guarded a large portion of the authority in Plymouth in actuality, the compact, with its core values of self-government and mutual consent, has been seen as a crucial development in the democratic process.