OPINION:
Thanksgiving is when family and friends gather to enjoy a festive meal, watch a football game, share life cycle memories and renew — or sometimes repair — bonds of affection.
With political divisions running deep, we’re told that many Thanksgiving gatherings among family and friends are discordant, even imperiled, because of dissension and distrust regarding politics. I hope these reports are exaggerated. It would be a shame if they were not.
As always, on this Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the blessings bestowed upon my family and friends and for the joyous occasions we share together. I’m also grateful for their support in the inevitable times of sadness that we all experience in our lives.
But here, on this Thanksgiving, especially after a contentious election season that sharpened the discord and discontent that exists in our body politic, I want to consider briefly the bonds that ought to nurture and sustain the American republican experiment. I have in mind, for present purposes now, three seminal moments in our nation’s history that produced sentiments that, upon reflection, could reinvigorate the communal American spirit.
First, the Mayflower Compact was signed on Nov. 11, 1620. The Mayflower’s original destination was near the mouth of the Hudson River. But when rough seas blew the ship off course and the voyagers landed at Plymouth, they understood they were in territory beyond the authority they had been granted. Hence, there was a need for an agreement — which we now call the Mayflower Compact and which they called a “covenant” — to govern their affairs. The covenant was signed by all male passengers aboard the Mayflower.
The compact declares the Pilgrims’ purpose “to covenant & combine ourselves together into a civill body politick, for our better ordering, & preservation & furtherance of the ends” of planting a colony. It continues, “to enact, constitute, and frame such just & equal lawes, ordinances, Acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet & convenient for the general good of the Colonie: unto which we promise all submission and obedience.”
I’ve retained the original spelling here, but the meaning should be clear.
The Mayflower Compact is simple but nevertheless foundational as a declaration of self-government. The seekers of the New World combined in a covenantal “civil body politic,” agreeing to submit to “just and equal” laws.
Second, to James Madison’s Federalist No. 14, published on Nov. 30, 1787. In urging ratification of the Constitution in the face of the strident anti-Federalist opposition, Madison wrote:
“Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow citizens of one great respectable and flourishing empire.”
Finally, to 1861, with America on the verge of Civil War, and President Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. In his last-ditch effort to save the Union without war, Lincoln said:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Lincoln’s eloquent words did not save the Union in 1861. But his words do forever provoke sentiments that possess the power to help preserve it.
The Mayflower Compact’s covenant binds together the Pilgrims in a self-governing “civil body politic.”
Madison’s invocation of the “cords of affection” that already knit together the colonists in urging ratification of the Constitution.
Lincoln appealed to the “mystic chords of memory” by pleading for the Union’s preservation.
These sentiments were never intended to appeal to distinct identity groups, particular ethnicities or narrow elitist elements in our body politic, but, as the Mayflower Compact has it, to the entire covenantal civil body politic. Indeed, they appeal to the formation of communal attachments that bind individuals to the institutions of our civil government and to our system of government under our Constitution.
Perhaps this Thanksgiving will be an occasion not only to deepen the cords of affection and mystic chords of memory among family and friends but also among our fellow citizens.
• Randolph May is president of the Free State Foundation, an independent, free-market-oriented think tank.
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